The One Tree

One: Starfare's Gem

LINDEN Avery walked beside Covenant down through the ways of Coercri. Below them, the stone Giantship, Starfare's Gem, came gliding toward the sole intact levee at the foot of the ancient city; but she paid no heed to it. Earlier, she had witnessed the way the dromond rode the wind like a boon-at once massive and delicate, full-sailed and precise-a vessel of hope for Covenant's quest, and for her own. As she and the Unbeliever, with Brinn, Cail, and then Vain behind them, descended toward the headrock and piers of The Grieve, she could have studied that craft with pleasure. Its vitality offered gladness to her senses.

But Covenant had just sent the two Stonedownors, Sunder and Hollian, back toward the Upper Land in the hope that they would be able to muster resistance among the villages against the depredations of the Clave. And that hope was founded on the fact that he had given them Loric's krill to use against the Sunbane. Covenant needed that blade, both as a weapon to take the place of the wild magic which destroyed peace and as a defence against the mystery of Vain, the Demondim-spawn. Yet this morning he had given the krill away. When Linden had asked him for an explanation, he had replied, I'm already too dangerous.

Dangerous. The word resonated for her. In ways which none but she could perceive, he was sick with power His native illness, his leprosy, was quiescent, even though he had lost or surrendered most of the self-protective disciplines which kept it slumberous. But in its place grew the venom that a Raver and the Sunbane had afflicted upon him. That moral poison was latent at present, but it crouched in him like a predator, awaiting its time to spring. To her sight, it underlay the hue of his skin as if it had blackened the marrow of his bones. With his venom and his white ring, he was the most dangerous man she had ever known.

She desired that danger in him. It denned for her the quality of strength which had originally attracted her to him on Haven Farm. He had smiled for Joan when he had sold his life for hers; and that smile had revealed more of his strange potency, his capacity to outwrestle fate itself, than any threat or violence could have. The caamora of release he had given to the Dead of The Grieve had shown the lengths to which he was able to go in the name of his complex guilts and passions. He was a paradox, and Linden ached to emulate him.

For all his leprosy and venom, his self-judgment and rage, he was an affirmation-an assertion of life and a commitment to the Land, a statement of himself in opposition to anything the Despiser could do. And what was she? What had she done with her whole life except flee from her past? All her severity, all her drive toward medical effectiveness against death, had been negative from the start-a rejection of her own mortal heritage rather than an approval of the beliefs she nominally served. She was like the Land under the tyranny of the Clave and the Sunbane-a place ruled by fear and bloodshed rather than love.

Covenant's example had taught her this about herself. Even when she had not understood why he was so attractive to her, she had followed him instinctively. And now she knew that she wanted to be like him. She wanted to be a danger to the forces which impelled people to their deaths.

She studied him as they walked, trying to imprint the gaunt, prophetic lines of his visage, the strictness of his mouth and the wild tangle of his beard, upon her own resolve. He emanated a strait anticipation that she shared.

Like him, she looked forward to the prospect of a voyage of hope in the company of Giants. Although she had spent only a few days with Grimmand Honninscrave, Cable Seadreamer, Pitchwife, and the First of the Search, she already comprehended the pang of love which entered Covenant's voice whenever he spoke of the Giants he had known. But she also possessed a private eagerness, an anticipation of her own.

Almost from the moment when her health-sense had awakened, it had been a source of pain and dismay for her. Her first acute perception had been of the ill of Nassic's murder. And that sight had launched a seemingly endless sequence of Ravers and Sunbane which had driven her to the very edges of survival. The continuous onslaught of palpable evil-moral and physical disease which she would never be able to cure-had filled her with ineffectually, demonstrating her unworth at every touch and glance. And then she had fallen into the hands of the Clave, into the power of Gibbon-Raver. The prophecy which he had uttered against her, the sabulous atrocity which he had radiated into her, had crammed every corner of her soul with a loathing and rejection indistinguishable from self-abhorrence. She had sworn that she would never again open the doors of her senses to any outward appeal.

But she had not kept that vow. The obverse of her sharp vulnerability was a peculiar and necessary usefulness. The same percipience which so exposed her to dismay had also enabled her to provide for her own recovery from Courser-poison and broken bones. That capacity had touched her medical instincts deeply, giving a validation to her identity which she had thought lost when she had been translated out of the world she understood. In addition, she had been able to serve her companions by helping them against the murderous ill of the lurker of the Sarangrave.

And then the company had escaped Sarangrave Flat into Seareach, where the Sunbane did not reign. Surrounded by natural health, by fall weather and colour as pristine as the beginning of life, and accompanied by Giants-especially by Pitchwife, whose irrepressible humour seemed a balm for every darkness-she had felt her ankle heal under the eldritch influence of diamondraught. She had tasted the tangible loveliness of the world, had experienced keenly the gift Covenant had given to the Dead of The Grieve. She had begun to know in the most visceral way that her health-sense was accessible to good as well as to evil-and that perhaps she could exercise some choice over the doom which Gibbon had foretold for her.

That was her hope. Perhaps in that way if in no other she would be able to transform her life.

The old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had said, Be true. There is also love in the world. For the first time, those words did not fill her with dread.

She hardly looked away from Covenant as they descended the Giant-wrought stairs. He appeared equal to anything. But she was also aware of other things. The clear morning. The salt-rimed emptiness of Coercri. The intransigent black Peril of Vain. And at her back, the Haruchai. The way they paced the stone belied their characteristic dispassion. They seemed almost avid to explore the unknown Earth with Covenant and the Giants. Linden concentrated on these details as if they formed the texture of the new life she desired.

However, as the companions moved out into the direct sunlight on the base of the city, where the First, Seadreamer, and Pitchwife waited with Ceer and Hergrom, Linden's gaze leaped outward as if it were drawn by a lodestone; and she saw Starfare's Gem easing its way into the levee.

The Giantship was a craft to amaze her heart. It rose above her, dominating the sky as her sight rushed to take it in. While its Master, Grimmand Honninscrave, shouted orders from the wheeldeck which stood high over the vessel's heel, and Giants swarmed its rigging to furl the canvas and secure the lines, it coasted into its berth with deft accuracy. The skill of its crew and the cunning of its construction defied the massive tan-and-moire granite of which it was made. Seen from nearby, the sheer weight of the dromond's seamless sides and masts disguised the swiftness of its shape, the long sweep of the decks, the jaunty angle of the prow, the just balance of the spars. But when her perceptions adjusted to the scale of the ship, she could see that it was apt for Giants. Their size attained a proper dimension among the shrouds. And the moire of the stone sides rose from the water like flames of granite eagerness.

That stone surprised Linden. Instinctively, she had questioned the nature of the Giantship, believing that granite would be too brittle to withstand the stress of the seas. But as her vision sprang into the ship, she saw her error. This granite had the slight but necessary flexibility of bone. Its vitality went beyond the limitations of stone.

And that vitality shone through the dromond's crew. They were Giants; but on their ship they were more than that. They were the articulation and service of a brave and breathing organism, the hands and laughter of a life which exalted them. Together, the stone and the Giants gave Starfare's Gem the look of a vessel which contended against the powerful seas simply because no other test could match its native exultation.

Its three masts, each rising high enough to carry three sails, aspired like cedars over the wheeldeck, where Honninscrave stood. He lolled slightly with the faint unevenness of the Sea as if he had been born with combers underfoot, salt in his beard, mastery in every glance of his cavernous eyes. His shout in answer to Pitchwife's hail echoed off the face of Coercri, making The Grieve resound with welcome for the first time in many centuries. Then the sunlight and the ship blurred before Linden as sudden tears filled her eyes as if she had never seen joy before.

After a moment, she blinked her sight clear and looked again at Covenant. Tautness had twisted his face into a grin like a contortion; but the spirit behind that grimace was clear to her. He was looking at his means to achieve his quest for the One Tree, for the survival of the Land. And more than that: he was looking at Giants, the kindred of Saltheart Foamfollower, whom he had loved. She did not need him to explain the desire and fear which caused his grin to look so much like a snarl. His former victory over Lord Foul had been cleansed of Despite by the personal anodyne of Foamfollower's laughter. And the cost of that victory had been the Giant's life. Covenant now regarded the Giants of Starfare's Gem with yearning and memory: he feared he would bring them to Foamfollower's fate.

That also Linden understood. Like his obduracy, her own stubbornness had been born in loss and guilt. She knew what it meant to distrust the consequences of her desires.

But the arrival of the Giantship demanded her attention. Noise bubbled out of the vessel like a froth of gaiety. Hawsers were thrown to Pitchwife and Seadreamer, who snubbed them taut to the long-unused belaying-posts of the pier. Starfare's Gem rubbed its shoulders against the sides of the levee, settled itself at rest. And as soon as the dromond had been secured, the Master and his crew of twoscore Giants swung down ropes and ladders, bounding to the piers.

There they saluted the First with affection, hugged Seadreamer, shouted their pleasure at Pitchwife. The First returned their respects gravely: with her iron hair and her broadsword, she held their familiarity at a distance. But Pitchwife expressed enough mirth to compensate for Seadreamer's mute resignation; and shortly the Giants began to roil forward to look at the city of the Unhomed, their ancient lost kindred. Linden found herself surrounded by weathered, brawny men and women twice her height-sailors built like oaks, and yet as full of movement and wonder as saplings. All of them were plainly dressed in the habiliments of their work-in sarks of mail formed of interlocking stone discs and heavy leather leggings-but nothing else about them was drab. They were colourful in language and exuberance and salt humour. With a swirl of activity, they restored life to The Grieve.

Their impulse to explore the city, investigate the handiwork of their long-dead people, was palpable to Linden. And Covenant's eyes shone in response-a recollection of the caamora by which he had redeemed Coercri from anguish, earning the title the First had given him, Giantfriend. But through the tumult, monolithic jests and laughter to which Pitchwife riposted gleefully, questions that the Haruchai answered with characteristic tersity, salutations which dazzled Linden and made Covenant straighten his back as if he sought to be taller, the First addressed Honninscrave sternly, telling him of her decision to aid Covenant's quest. And she spoke of urgency, of the growing chancre of the Sunbane and of the difficulty of locating the One Tree, creating a new Staff of Law in time to prevent the Sunbane from tearing the heart out of the Earth. The Master's excitement sobered rapidly. When she asked about the state of the Giantship's supplies, he replied that the Anchormaster, his second-in-command, had re-provisioned the dromond while waiting off the littoral of the Great Swamp. Then he began calling his crew back to the ship.

Several of the Giants protested good-naturedly, asking for the story of The Grieve. But Covenant was nodding to himself as if he were thinking of the way the Clave fed the Banefire and the Sunbane with blood. Honninscrave did not hesitate. “Patience, sluggards!” he responded. “Are you Giants, that a little patience eludes you? Let stories await their turn, to ease the labour of the seas. The First requires haste!”

His command gave Linden a pang of regret. The ebullience of these Giants was the happiest thing she had seen in a long time. And she thought that perhaps Covenant might want a chance to savour what he had achieved here. But she understood him well enough to know that he would not accept honour for himself without persuasion. Moving closer to him, she thrust her voice through the clamour. “Berek found the One Tree, and he didn't have any Giants to help him. How far away can it be?”

He did not look at her. The dromond held his gaze. Under his beard, he chewed a mood which was half excitement, half trepidation.

“Sunder and Hollian will do everything they can,” she went on. “And those Haruchai you freed aren't going to sit on their hands. The Clave is already in trouble. We can afford a little time.”

His eyes did not shift. But she felt his attention turn toward her. “Tell me,” he murmured, barely audible through the interchanges of the Giants. They and the Haruchai had ranged themselves expectantly along the pier. “Do you think I should have tried to destroy the Clave? While I had the chance?”

The question struck a nerve in her. It resembled too closely another question he would have asked if he had known enough about her. “Some infections have to be cut out,” she replied severely. “If you don't kill the disease somehow, you lose the patient. Do you think those fingers of yours were cut off out of spite?”

His brows flinched. He regarded her as if she had startled him out of his personal concerns, made him aware of her in a way which would not allow peace between them. The muscles of his throat were tight as he asked, “Is that what you would have done?”

She could not keep from wincing. Gibbon had said to her, You have committed murder. Are you not evil? Suddenly, she felt sure that Covenant would have agreed with the Raver. Fighting to conceal her self-betrayal, she answered, “Yes. Why else do you have all that power?” She already knew too well how much she wanted power.

“Not for that.” Around them, the Giants had fallen silent, waiting for his decision. In the unanticipated quiet, his vehemence rang out like a promise over the lapping of the Sea. But he ignored his audience. Facing Linden squarely, he articulated, “I've already killed twenty-one of them. I'm going to find some other answer.”

She thought he would go on. But a moment later he seemed to see and recognize her abashment, though he could not have known its cause. At once, he turned to the First. Softly, he said, “I'd feel better if we got started.”

She nodded, but did not move. Instead, she drew her falchion, gripped it in both hands like a salute.

“Giantfriend.” As she spoke, there was a shout in her words, though her voice was quiet. “To all our people you have given a gift which we will repay. This I say in the name of the Search, and of the Earth-Sight”-she glanced at Seadreamer — “which guides us still, though I have chosen another path to the same goal.” Seadreamer's face knotted around the white scar running under his eyes across the bridge of his nose; but he permitted himself to show no protest. The First concluded, “Covenant Giantfriend, we are yours while your purpose holds.”

Covenant remained silent, a man tangled in gratitude and self-doubt. But he bowed his head to the leader of the Search.

The gesture touched Linden. It became him, as if he had found in himself the grace, or perhaps the sense of worth, to accept help. But at the same time she was relieved to escape the hidden conflicts which had surfaced in his questions. When the First said firmly, “Let us sail,” Linden followed the Giants without hesitation toward Starfare's Gem.

The side of the Giantship leaned hugely over her; and when she set her hands and feet to the heavy thews of the rope-ladder which the crew held for her, the ascent seemed to carry her surprisingly high, as if the vessel were even larger than it appeared to be. But Cail climbed protectively behind her, and Giants surged upward on all sides. As she stooped through the railing onto the foredeck, she forgot her discomfiture. The dromond reached out to her like an entrancement. Unaccustomed to such stone, she could not extend her percipience very far around her; but all the granite within her range felt as vital as living wood. She half expected to taste sap flowing beneath the surfaces of the Giantship. And that sensation intensified as her companions boarded the craft. Because of his vertigo and his half-hand, Covenant had difficulty climbing; but Brinn soon helped him past the rail. Following either Covenant or Linden, Vain smoothly ascended the ladder, then stopped like a statue at the edge of the foredeck, smiling his black, ambiguous smile. Ceer and Hergrom appeared to flow up the ropes. And as every set of feet took hold of the stone, Starfare's Gem radiated more bustling energy to Linden's nerves. Even through her shoes, the granite felt too buoyant to be overborne by any Sea.

Sunlight covered the piers, spangled the gently heaving strip of water along the shipside, shone into the face of Coercri as if this day marked the first true dawn since the destruction of the Unhomed. Responding to Honninscrave's commands, some of the Giants positioned themselves to release the moorings. Others leaped into the rigging, climbing the heavy cables as lightly as children. Still others went below, where Linden could feel them tending the inner life of the ship until they passed beyond her inexperienced perceptions. In moments, the lower sails began to ripple in the breeze; and Starfare's Gem eased out to Sea.

Two: Black Mood

LINDEN tried to watch everything as the dromond slipped backward from the levee, then turned toward open water. Shifting from side to side, she saw the Giants unfurling canvas as if the labour were done by incantation rather than effort. Under her feet, the deck began to roll; but the seas were light, and the Giantship's great weight made it stable. She felt no discomfort. Her gaze repeatedly intersected Covenant's, and his excitement heightened hers. His expression was free of darkness; even his beard seemed to bristle with possibilities. After a moment, she became aware that he was breathing words along the breeze:

“Stone and Sea are deep in life,

two unalterable symbols of the world:

permanence at rest, and permanence in motion;

participants in the Power that remains.”

They resonated in her memory like an act of homage.

When she changed positions to look back toward Coercri, the breeze caught her hair, fluttering it across her face. She ran her fingers into her wheaten tresses, held them in place; and that simple gesture gave her more pleasure in herself than she had felt for a long time. Salt tanged the air, sharpening the very sunlight so that The Grieve looked like a place of rebirth as it receded. She began to think that perhaps more things had been reborn there than she would have dared to hope.

Then Pitchwife began to sing. He stood some distance away, but his voice carried like light across the dromond, rising strongly from his deformed chest over the slapping of the waves and the snap of the canvas. His tune was a plain-song spiced with accents and suggestions of harmony; and the other Giants joined him:

“Come sea and wave -

broad footpath of those who roam

and gateway to the world!

All ways lead the way to Home.

“Come wind and speed -

sky-breath and the life of sail!

Lines and sheets unfurled,

our hearts covet every gale.

“Come travel and quest!

Discovery of the Earth:

mysteries unknurled:

roaming without stint or dearth:

“Risk and journey save

the heart of life from loss and need.

We are the ocean's guest,

and we love the vasty world!”

The Giants were joyful singers, and their voices formed a counterpoint to the rocking of the masts, a song punctuated by a rising staccato as the breeze knocked the canvas. Starfare's Gem appeared to ride music as well as wind.

And as the wind stiffened, Coercri slid toward the horizon with surprising celerity while the sun rose into midday. Honninscrave and his crew exchanged comments and jests as if they were all negligent; but his eyes under the bulwark of his brows missed nothing. At his orders, the rest of the sails had been raised; and Starfare's Gem strode into the Sunbirth Sea with a fleetness that fulfilled the prophecy of its moire-marked sides. Linden could feel vibrancy running like a thrill through the stone. In the hands of Giants, even granite became a thing of swiftness and graceful poise.

Before long, her sensations became so sapid that she could no longer remain still. Instinctively, she moved away to begin exploring the ship.

At once, Cail was at her shoulder. As she crossed the foredeck, he surprised her by asking if she wanted to see her quarters.

She stopped to stare at him. The impassive wall of his mien gave no hint of how he had come by enough knowledge of the dromond to make such an offer. His short tunic left his brown limbs always free and ready; but his question made him appear not only prepared but also prescient. However, he answered her mute inquiry by explaining that Ceer and Hergrom had already spoken to the Storesmaster and had obtained from her at least a skeletal understanding of the ship.

For a moment, Linden paused to consider the continuing providence of the Haruchai. But then she realised that Cail had offered her exactly what she did want-a place of her own; privacy in which to accustom herself to the sensations of the Giantship; a chance to clarify the new things that were happening to her. And perhaps the hospitality of the Giants would extend as far as bathwater? Hot bathwater? Images of luxuriance filled her head. How long had it been since she had last taken a hot bath? Since she had felt genuinely clean? She nodded to Cail and followed him toward the stern of the dromond.

Amidship stood a flat-roofed structure that separated the fore-and afterdecks, completely spanning the vessel from side to side. When Cail led her into the housing through a seadoor with a storm-sill as high as her knees, she found herself in a long eating-hall with a galley on one side and a warren of storage-lockers on the other. The structure had no windows, but lanterns made it bright and cheery. Their light gleamed on the stone of the midmast as it passed straight through the hall like a rooftree. The shaft was carved like a hatchment with patterns at which she was tempted to look more closely. But Cail moved through the hall as if he already knew all its secrets; and she went with him out to the afterdeck.

Together, they crossed to the Giantship's stern. She acknowledged Honninscrave's salute from the wheeldeck, then followed Cail through another seadoor to starboard below the Master's position. That entrance gave access to a smooth stone ladder leading downward. The ladder had been formed for Giants, but she was able to use it. And she only had to descend one level. There, in a passageway lit by more lanterns, she found a series of doors-rooms, Cail explained, which had been set aside for her, Vain, Ceer, and himself.

Covenant, Brinn, and Hergrom were to be similarly housed on the port side of the vessel.

When she entered her cabin, she discovered that it was a chamber which would have been small for a Giant but seemed almost wastefully large for her. A long hammock hung near one wall; two massive chairs and a table occupied most of the floor. These furnishings outsized her: the chair-seats reached to her waist; and she would have to stand on the table to gain the hammock. But for the present those difficulties did not bother her. The chamber was bright with sunshine reflecting through an open port, and it offered privacy. She was glad to have it.

But moments after Cail left in search of the food and bathwater she requested of him, a tension which had been nagging at her underneath her excitement demanded her notice. The withdrawal of Cail's hard Haruchai presence pulled aside a veil within her. A hand of darkness hidden somewhere inside the depths of the dromond reached out one dire finger toward her heart. At its touch, all her relief and anticipation and newness eroded and fell down like a sea-doused castle of sand. An old and half forgotten black mood began to seep back into her.

It stank of her parents and Gibbon.

After all, what had truly changed for her? What right or reason did she have to be where she was? She was still the same-a woman driven by the need to flee death rather than to pursue life. She did not know how to change. And the na-Mhoram had explicitly denied her hope. He had said, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Because you are open to that which no other in the Land can discern, you are open to be forged. She would never be free of his eager cruelty, of the gelid ill with which he had desecrated her private flesh-or of the way she had responded. The message of his doom came back to her now, rising as if it grew from the keel of Starfare's Gem-as if the health of the dromond contained a canker spot which fed on the Giants and their ship.

That blackness had contorted much of her life. It was her parents, her father and mother. And it was here. It was within her, and yet she inhaled it as if the air were full of it as well. A fate she could neither name nor endure seemed to lurk in ambush for her, so that her cabin felt more like a cell in the hold of Revelstone than a sun-washed chamber in the company of Giants.

For several long moments, she fought the oppression, struggled to define the strange way it appeared to spring from outside her. But her past was too strong; it blinded her percipience. Long before Cail could return, she fled her cabin, rushed back up to the open air. Clinging to the starboard rail with hands that trembled, she swallowed repeatedly, heavily, at the old dread rising in her throat like a recognition of Gibbon's touch.

But gradually the darkness lessened. She could think of no reason why this should be true; but she felt instinctively that she had put some distance between herself and the source of the mood. Seeking to increase that distance, she turned toward the nearest stairway to the wheeldeck.

Ceer had appeared at her side toward her while Cail was away. She could hardly refrain from leaning against him, bracing her frailty on his rectitude. But she hated that weakness. Striving to ignore it, deny it, she impelled herself up the stairs alone.

On the wheeldeck, she found Honninscrave, the First, Covenant, Brinn, and another Giant who held the great wheel which guided the ship. This wheel was formed of stone and stood half again as tall as Linden; but the steerswoman turned its spokes as lightly as if it had been carved of balsa wood. Honninscrave greeted the Chosen, and the First gave her a nod of welcome; yet Linden felt immediately that she had interrupted a discussion. Covenant looked toward her as if he meant to ask her opinion. But then he closed his mouth and gazed at her more intently. Before she could speak, he said, “Linden, what's the matter?”

She frowned back at him, vexed and shamed by the transparency of her emotions. Clearly, she had not changed in any way that mattered. She still could not tell him the truth-not here, under an open sky and the eyes of the Giants. She tried to dismiss his question with a shrug, smooth out the lines of her face. But his attention did not lose its acuity. In a careful voice, she said, “I was thinking about Gibbon.” With her eyes, she asked him to let the matter pass. “I'd rather think about something else.”

At that, his stare softened. He looked like a man who Was willing to do almost anything for her. Clearing his throat, he said, “We were talking about Vain. He hasn't moved since he came aboard. And he's in the way. Interferes with some of the rigging. The crew asked him to move-but you know how much good that did.”

She knew. Time and again, she had seen the Demondim-spawn in his familiar relaxed stance, arms slightly bent, eyes focused on nothing-as motionless as an obelisk.

“So they tried to shift him. Three of them. He didn't budge.” Covenant shook his head at the idea that anyone could be heavy or strong enough to defeat three Giants. Then he concluded, “We were trying to decide what to do about it. Honninscrave wants to use a block-and-tackle.”

Linden gave an inward sigh of relief. The darkness retreated another step, pushed back by this chance to be of use. “It won't do any good,” she replied. Vain's purposes were a mystery to her; but she had seen deeply enough into him to know that he could become denser and less tractible than the granite of the ship. “If he doesn't want to move, he won't move.”

Covenant nodded as if she had confirmed his expectations. The First muttered sourly to herself. With a shrug, Honninscrave ordered his crew to work around the Demondim-spawn.

Linden was glad of their company. Her sense of oppression was definitely weaker now. The huge health of the Giants seemed to shield her. And Covenant's considerateness eased her. She could breathe as if her lungs were not clogged with memories of death. Moving to the taffrail, she sat down against one of the posts and tried to tune herself to the Giantship.

Shortly, Cail came to take Ceer's place. His features betrayed no reproach for the wasted errand on which she had sent him. For that forbearance also she was grateful. She sensed the presence of a fierce capacity for judgment behind the impassivity of the Haruchai. She did not want it turned against her.

Almost without volition, her gaze returned to Covenant. But his attention was elsewhere. Starfare's Gem and its crew had taken hold of him again. He was so entranced by the dromond, so moved by the companionship of Giants, that everything else receded. He asked Honninscrave and the First questions to start them talking, then listened to their responses with the hunger of a man who had found no other answer to his loneliness.

Following his example, Linden also listened and watched.

Honninscrave talked at glad length about the life and workings of his craft. The crew was divided into three watches under the command of the Master, the Anchormaster, and the ship's third-in-command, the Storesmaster. However, like their officers, the Giants did not appear to rest when they were off duty. Their affection would not permit them to leave Starfare's Gem alone, and they spent their time doing odd jobs around the vessel. But when Honninscrave began to describe these tasks, and the purposes they served, Linden lost her way. The crew had Giantish names for every line and sheet, every part of the ship, every implement; and she could not absorb the barrage of unfamiliar words. Some stayed with her: Dawngreeter, the highest sail on the foremast; Horizon-scan, the lookout atop the midmast; Shipsheartthew, the great wheel which turned the rudder. But she did not know enough about ships and sailing to retain the rest.

This problem was aggravated by the fact that Honninscrave rarely phrased his instructions to his watch as direct orders. More often, he shouted a comment about the state of the sails, or the wind, or the seas, and left the choice of appropriate action to any Giant who happened to be near the right place. As a result, the tacking of the ship seemed to happen almost spontaneously-a reaction to the shifting air rather than to Honninscrave's mastery, or perhaps a theurgy enacted by the vivid and complex vibrations of the rigging. This beguiled Linden, but did not greatly enhance her grasp on the plethora of names the Master used.

Later, she was vaguely surprised to see Ceer and Hergrom in the shrouds of the aftermast. They moved deftly among the lines, learning from and aiding the Giants with an easy alacrity which seemed almost gay. When she asked Cail what his people were doing, he replied that they were fulfilling an old dream of the Haruchai. During all the centuries that the Unhomed and the Bloodguard had known each other before and after the Ritual of Desecration, no Haruchai had ever set foot on a Giantship. Ceer and Hergrom were answering a desire which had panged their ancestors more than three thousand years ago.

Cail's terse account touched her obscurely, like a glimpse of an unsuspected and occult beauty. The steadfastness of his people transcended all bounds. During Covenant's previous visits to the Land, the Bloodguard had already been warding the Council of Lords without sleep or death for nearly two thousand years, so extravagant had been their Vow of service. And now, millennia later, Cail and his people still preserved the memories and commitments of those Bloodguard.

But the implications of such constancy eventually cast Linden back upon herself; and as the afternoon waned, her gloom returned. Her senses were growing steadily more attuned to the Giantship. She could read the movements and mirth of the Giants passing through the decks below her; with effort, she could estimate the number of people in Foodfendhall, the midship housing. This should have eased her. Everything she consciously felt was redolent with clean strength and good humour. And yet her darkness thickened along the slow expansion of her range.

Again, she was troubled by the sensation that her mood grew from an external source-from some fatal flaw or ill in the Giantship. Yet she could not disentangle that sensation from her personal response. She had spent too much of her life in this oppression to think seriously that it could be blamed on anything outside herself. Gibbon had not created her blackness: he had only given her a glimpse of its meaning. But familiarity did not make it more bearable.

When the call for supper came, she resisted her depression to answer it. Covenant did not hesitate; and she meant to follow him to the ends of the Earth if necessary to learn the kind of courage which made him forever active against his doom. Beneath his surface, leprosy slept and Lord Foul's venom awaited the opportunity to work its intended desecration. Yet he seemed equal to his plight, more than equal to it. He did not suffer from the particular fear which had paralyzed her in the face of Joan's possession, Marid's monstrous ill, Gibbon-Raver's horror. But for that very reason she was determined to accompany him until she had found his answer. Hastening to his side, she went with him toward Foodfendhall.

However, as night gathered over the decks, her uneasiness mounted. The setting of the sun left her exposed to a stalking peril. In the eating-hall, she was crowded among Giants whose appetites radiated vitality; but she could barely force food past the thickness of defeat in her throat, although she had not had a meal since that morning. Steaming stew, cakes full of honey, dried fruit: her black mood made such things vaguely nauseating.

Soon afterward, Honninscrave ordered the sails shortened for the night; and the time came for tales. The Giants responded eagerly, gathering on the afterdeck and in the shrouds of the aftermast so that the First and Covenant could speak to them from the wheeldeck. Their love of tales was plain in them-a love which made them appear childlike, and yet also gave them a precious and encompassing courage. And Covenant went aft to meet them as though this, too, were something he already knew how to bear. But Linden had reached the limit of her endurance. Above the masts, the stars appeared disconsolate in their immense isolation. The noises of the ship-the creak of the rigging, the uncertainty of the sails whenever the wind shifted, the protest of the waves as the dromond shouldered through them-sounded like pre-echoes of anger or grief. And she had already heard many stories-the tales of the Earth's creation, of Kevin Landwaster's despair, of Covenant's victory. She was not ready for any more.

Instead, she forced herself to go back to her cabin. Down into the darkness rather than away from it.

She found that in her absence the old furniture had been replaced with chairs and a table more to her size; and a stepladder had been provided to give her easier access to the hammock. But this courtesy did not relieve her. Still the oppression seeped into her from the stone of the dromond. Even after she threw open the port, letting in the wind and the sounds of the Sea under the ship's heel, the chamber's ambience remained viscid, comfortless. When she mustered the courage to extinguish her lantern, the dark concentrated inward on her, hinting at malice.

I'm going crazy. Despite its special texture, the granite around her began to feel like the walls of Revelstone, careless and unyielding. Memories of her parents gnawed at the edges of her brain. Have committed murder. Going crazy. The blood on her hands was as intimate as any Covenant had ever shed.

She could hear the Giants singing overhead, though the noise of the Sea obscured their words. But she fought her impulse to flee the cabin, run back to the misleading security °f the assemblage. Instead, she followed the faint scent of diamondraught until she found a flask of the potent Giantish liquor on her table. Then she hesitated. Diamondraught was an effective healer and roborant, as she knew from personal experience; but it was also strongly soporific. She hesitated because she was afraid of sleep, afraid that slumber represented another flight from something she needed desperately to confront and master. But she had faced these moods often enough in the past, endured them until she had wanted to wail like a lost child-and what had she ever accomplished by it? Estimating the effect of the diamondraught, she took two small swallows. Then she climbed into the hammock, pulled a blanket over herself to help her nerves feel less exposed, and tried to relax. Before she was able to unknot her muscles, the sea-sway of the dromond lifted her into slumber.

For a time, the world of her unconsciousness was blissfully empty. She rode long slow combers of sleep on a journey from nowhere into nowhere and suffered no harm. But gradually the night became the night of the woods behind Haven Farm, and ahead of her burned the fire of invocation to Lord Foul. Joan lay there, possessed by a cruelty so acute that it stunned Linden to the soul. Then Covenant took Joan's place, and Linden broke free, began running down the hillside to save him, forever running down the hillside to save him and never able to reach him, never able to stop the astonishing violence which drove the knife into his chest. It pierced him whitely, like an evil and tremendous fang. When she reached him, blood was gushing from the wound-more blood than she had ever seen in her life. Impossible that one body held so much blood! It welled out of him as if any number of people had been slain with that one blow.

She could not stop it. Her hands were too small to cover the wound. She had left her medical bag in her car. Feverishly, she tore off her shirt to try to staunch the flow, leaving herself naked and defenceless; but the flannel was instantly soaked with blood, useless. Blood slicked her breasts and thighs as she strove to save his life and could not. Despite every exigency of her training and self-mortification, she could not stop that red stream. The firelight mocked her. The wound was growing.

In moments, it became as wide as his chest. Its violence ate at his tissues like venom. Her hands still clutched the futile sop of her shirt, still madly trying to exert pressure to plug the well; but it went on expanding until her arms were lost in him to the elbows. Blood poured over her thighs like the lichor of the world. She was hanging from the edge by her chest, with her arms extended into the red maw as if she were diving to her death. And the wound continued to widen. Soon it was larger than the stone on which Covenant had fallen, larger than the hollow in the woods.

Then with a shock of recognition she saw that the wound was more than a knife-thrust in his chest: it was a stab to the very heart of the Land. The hole had become a pit before her, and its edge was a sodden hillside, and the blood spewing over her was the life of the Earth. The Land was bleeding to death. Before she could even cry out, she was swept away across the murdered body of the ground. She had no way to save herself from drowning.

The turbulence began to buffet her methodically. The hot fluid made her throat raw, burned her voice out of her. She was helpless and lost. Her mere flesh could not endure or oppose such an atrocity. Better if she had never tried to help Covenant, never tried to staunch his wound. This would never have happened if she had accepted her paralysis and simply let him die.

But the shaking of her shoulders and the light slapping across her face insisted that she had no choice. The rhythm became more personal; by degrees, it dragged her from her diamondraught-sopor. When she wrenched her eyes open, the moonlight from the open port limned Cail's visage. He stood on the stepladder so that he could reach her to awaken her. Her throat was sore, and the cabin still echoed her screaming.

“Cail!” she gasped. Oh my God!

“Your sleep was troubled.” His voice was as flat as his mien. “The Giants say their diamondraught does not act thus.”

“No.” She struggled to sit up, fought for self-possession Images of nightmare flared across her mind; but behind them the mood in which she had gone to sleep had taken on a new significance. “Get Covenant.”

“The ur-Lord rests,” he replied inflectionlessly.

Impelled by urgency, Linden flung herself over the edge of the hammock, forced Cail to catch her and lower her to the floor. “Get him.” Before the Haruchai could respond, she rushed to the door.

In the lantern-lit companionway, she almost collided with Seadreamer. The mute Giant was approaching her cabin as if e had heard her cries. For an instant, she was stopped by the similarity between her nightmare and the vision which had reft him of his voice-a vision so powerful that it had compelled his people to launch a Search for the wound which threatened the Earth. But she had no time. The ship was in danger! Sprinting past him, she leaped for the ladder.

When she reached open air, she was in the shadow of the wheeldeck as the moon sank toward setting. Several Giants were silhouetted above her. Heaving herself up the high stairs, she confronted the Storesmaster, a Giant holding Shipsheartthew, and two or three companions. Her chest strained to control her fear as she demanded, “Get the First.”

The Storesmaster, a woman named Heft Galewrath, had a bulky frame tending toward fat which gave her an appearance of stolidity; but she wasted no time on questions or hesitancy. With a nod to one of her companions, she said simply, “Summon the First. And the Master.” The crewmember obeyed at once.

As Linden regained her breath, she became aware that Cail was beside her. She did not ask him if he had called Covenant. The pale scar which marked his left arm from shoulder to elbow had been given him by a Courser-spur aimed at her. It seemed to refute any doubt of him.

Then Covenant came up the stairs, with Brinn at his back. He looked dishevelled and groggy in the moonlight; but his voice was tight as he began, “Linden-?” She gestured him silent, knotted her fists to retain her fragile grip on herself. He turned to Cail; but before Covenant could phrase a question, Honninscrave arrived with his beard thrust forward like a challenge to any danger threatening his vessel. The First was close behind him.

Linden faced them all, forestalled anything they might ask. Her voice shook.

“There's a Raver on this ship.”

Her words stunned the night. Everything was stricken into silence. Then Covenant asked, “Are you sure?” His question appeared to make no sound.

The First overrode him. “What is this 'Raver?' ” The metal of her tone was like an upraised sword.

One of the sails retorted dully in its gear as the wind changed slightly. The deck tilted. The Storesmaster called softly aloft for adjustments to be made in the canvas. Starfare's Gem righted its tack. Linden braced her legs against the

ship's movement and hugged the distress in her stomach, concentrating on Covenant.

“Of course I'm sure.” She could not suppress her trembling. “I can feel it.” The message in her nerves was as vivid as lightning. “At first I didn't know what it was. I've felt like this before. Before we came here.” She was dismayed by the implications of what she was saying-by the similarity between her old black moods and the taste of a Raver. But she compelled herself to go on. “But I was looking for the wrong thing. It's on this ship. Hiding. That's why I didn't understand sooner.” As her throat tightened, her voice rose toward shrillness. “On this ship.”

Covenant came forward, gripped her shoulders as if to prevent her from hysteria. “Where is it?”

Honninscrave cut off Covenant's question. “What is it? I am the Master of Starfare's Gem. I must know the peril.”

Linden ignored Honninscrave. She was focused on Covenant, clinching him for strength. “I can't tell.” And to defend him. Gibbon-Raver had said to her, You are being forged. She, not Covenant. But every attack on her had proved to be a feint. “Somewhere below.”

At once, he swung away from her, started toward the stairs. Over his shoulder, he called, “Come on. Help me find it.”

“Are you crazy?” Surprise and distress wrung the cry from her. “Why do you think it's here?”

He stopped, faced her again. But his visage was obscure in the moonlight. She could see only the waves of vehemence radiating from his bones. He had accepted his power and meant to use it.

“Linden Avery,” said the First grimly. “We know nothing of this Raver. You must tell us what it is.”

Linden's voice reached out to Covenant in supplication, asking him not to expose himself to this danger. “Didn't you tell them about The Grieve? About the Giant-Raver who killed all those-?” Her throat knotted, silencing her involuntarily.

“No.” Covenant returned to stand near her, and a gentler emanation came from him in answer to her fear. “Pitchwife told that story. In Coercri I talked about the Giant-Raver. But I never described what it was.”

He turned to the First and Honninscrave. "I told you about Lord Foul. The Despiser. But I didn't know I needed to tell you about the Ravers. They're his three highest servants. They don't have bodies of their own, so they work by taking over other beings. Possessing them." The blood in his tone smelled of Joan-and of other people Linden did not know.

“The old Lords used to say that no Giant or Haruchai could be mastered by a Raver. But turiya Herem had a fragment of the Illearth Stone. That gave it the power to possess a Giant. It was the one we saw in Coercri. Butchering the Unhomed.”

“Very well.” The First nodded. “So much at least is known to us, then. But why has this evil come among us? Does it seek to prevent our quest? How can it hold that hope, when so many of us are Giants and Haruchai? Her voice sharpened. ”Does it mean to possess you? Or the Chosen?" Before Linden could utter her fears, Covenant grated, “Something like that.” Then he faced her once more. “You're right. I won't go looking for it. But it's got to be found. We've got to get rid of it somehow.” The force of his will was focused on her. “You're the only one who can find it. Where is it?”

Her reply was muffled by her efforts to stop trembling. “Somewhere below,” she repeated.

The First looked at Honninscrave. He protested carefully, “Chosen, the under-decks are manifold and cunning. Much time will be required for a true search. And we have not your eyes. If this Raver holds no flesh, how will we discover it?”

Linden wanted to cry out. Gibbon had touched her. She carried his evil engraved in every part of her body, would never be clean of it again. How could she bear a repetition of that touch?

But Honninscrave's question was just; and an answering anger enabled her to meet him. The ship was threatened: Covenant was threatened. And here at least she had a chance to show that she could be a danger to Lord Foul and his machinations, not only to her friends. Her failures with Joan, with Marid, with Gibbon had taught her to doubt herself. But she had not come this far, only to repeat the surrender of her parents. Tightly, she replied, “I won't go down there. But I'll try to locate where it is.”

Covenant released his pent breath as if her decision were a victory.

The First and Honninscrave did not hesitate. Leaving the wheeldeck to the Storesmaster, they went down the stairs; and he sent a Giant hastening ahead of him to rouse the rest of the crew. Linden and Covenant followed more slowly. Brinn and Cail, Ceer and Hergrom formed a protective cordon around them as they moved forward to meet the Giants who came springing out of hatchways from their hammocks in Saltroamrest below the foredeck. Shortly, every crewmember who could be spared from the care of the dromond was present and ready.

Pitchwife and Seadreamer were there as well. But the First's demeanour checked Pitchwife's natural loquacity; and Seadreamer bore himself with an air of resignation.

In a tone of constricted brevity, forcibly restraining his Giantish outrage at the slayer of the Unhomed, Honninscrave detailed the situation to his crew, described what had to be done. When he finished, the First added sternly, “It appears that this peril is directed toward Covenant Giantfriend and the Chosen. They must be preserved at any hazard. Forget not that he is the redeemer of our lost kindred and holds a power which must not fall to this Raver. And she is a physician of great skill and insight, whose purpose in this quest is yet to be revealed. Preserve them and rid the Search of this ill.”

She might have said more. She was a Swordmain; her desire to strike blows in the name of the Unhomed was plain in her voice. But Pitchwife interposed lightly, “It is enough. Are we not Giants? We require no urging to defend our comrades.”

“Then make haste,” she responded. “The scouring of Starfare's Gem is no small matter.”

Honninscrave promptly organized the Giants into groups of two and sent them below. Then he turned to Linden. “Now, Chosen.” The command came from him firmly, as if he were bred for emergencies. “Guide us.”

She had been groping for a way to find the Raver, but had conceived no other method than to pace the ship, trying to track down the intruder's presence. As severely as she could, she said, “Forget everything under the wheeldeck. My cabin's down there. If it were that close, I would've known sooner.”

Through one of the open hatches, the Anchormaster relayed this information to the search parties below.

As the moon set behind Starfare's Gem, Linden Avery began to walk the afterdeck.

Working her way between the railings, she moved deliberately forward. At every step, she fought to overcome her distinctive resistance, struggled to open herself to the Raver's ambience. Even through her shoes, her senses were alive to the stone of the dromond. The granite mapped itself under her: she could feel the Giants hunting below her until they descended beyond her range. But the evil remained hidden, vague and fatal.

Soon the muscles along the backs of her legs began to cramp. Her nerves winced at each step. Gibbon had taught every inch of her body to dread Ravers. But she did not stop.

Dawn came not long after moonset, though the time felt long to her; and the sun caught her halfway up the afterdeck, nearly level with the midmast. She was shivering with strain and could not be certain that she had not already passed over the Raver's covert. When Ceer offered her a drink of water, she paused to accept it. But then she went on, knurling her concentration in both fists so that she would not falter.

Covenant had seated himself in a coil of hawser as large as a bed on one side of Foodfendhall. Brinn and Hergrom stood poised near him. He was watching her with a heavy scowl, radiating his frustration and helplessness, his anger at the blindness of his senses.

In fear that she would weaken, fail again, again, Linden increased her pace.

Before she reached the housing, a sudden spasm in her legs knocked her to the deck.

At once, Cail and Ceer caught her arms, lifted her erect.

“Here,” she panted. A fire of revulsion burned through her knees into her hips. She could not straighten her legs. “Under here. Somewhere.”

The Anchormaster shouted word down to the search parties.

Honninscrave studied her with perplexity. “That seems a strange hiding,” he muttered. “From deck to keel below you lie only grain-holds, food-lockers, water-chests. And all are full. Sevinhand”-he referred to the Anchormaster-“found pure water, wild maize, and much good fruit on the verges of the Great Swamp.”

Linden could not look at him. She was thinking absurdly, The verges of the Great Swamp. Where all the pollution of Sarangrave Flat drained into the Sea.

Gritting her teeth, she felt the darkness gather under her like a thunderhead. For a time, it lay fragmented in the depths of the ship-pieces of malice. Then it stirred. Thrumming like an assault through the granite, it began to swarm. The sunlight filled her eyes with recollections of bees, forcing her to duck her head, huddle into herself. Somewhere above her head, untended sails flapped limply. Starfare's Gem had become still, braced for the onslaught of the Raver.

It began to rise.

Abruptly, shouts of anger and surprise echoed from the under-decks. Fighting for breath, she gasped, “It's coming!”

The next instant, a dark gray tumult came flooding over the storm-sill out of Foodfendhall.

Rats.

Huge rats: rodents with sick yellow fangs and vicious eyes, hundreds of them. The Raver was in them. Their savagery filled the air with teeth.

They poured straight toward Covenant.

He staggered upright. At the same time, Brinn and Hergrom threw themselves between him and the attack. Ceer sped to their assistance.

Leaping like cats, the rodents sprang for the Haruchai. Covenant's defenders seemed to vanish under the gray wave.

At once, Honninscrave and Seadreamer charged into the assault. Their feet drummed the deck as they kicked and stamped about them. Blood spattered in all directions.

More Giants surged out of the housing in pursuit, pounded into the fray. Brinn and Ceer appeared amid the slashing moil, followed by Hergrom. With hands and feet, they chopped and kicked, crushing rats faster than Linden's eyes could follow.

Without warning, she felt a concatenation of intensity as Covenant's power took fire within him. But his defenders were too close to him. He could not unleash the wild magic.

Yet for a moment she thought he would be preserved. The Haruchai were dervish-wild, flinging rats away on all sides; the Giants trampled slaughter through the pack. The air became a scream which only she could hear-the fury of the Raver. In her fear for Covenant, she thought that she was rushing to his defence. But she had not moved, could not move. The simple proximity of the Raver overwhelmed her. It violated her volition, affirmed everything she had ever striven to deny about herself; and the contradiction held her. Only her vision swept forward as Covenant stumbled and fell, grappling frantically at his right leg.

Then he rolled back to his feet, snapped erect with a rat writhing clenched in both hands. White fire gutted the beast before he pitched it overboard. Revulsion twisted his face.

He seemed unaware of the blood which stained the shin of his pants.

In the confusion of the struggle, no one noticed that all the winds had died.

Three: Relapse

THE Giantship went dark around Linden. The blood on Covenant's pants became the blood of his knife-wound, the blood of her nightmare: it blotted out the world. She could taste the venom she had sucked from his forearm after Marid had bitten him. A moral poison. Not just sick: evil. It tasted like the nauseous breath of the strange figure on Haven Farm who had told her to Be true.

In spite of that man's putrid halitus, she had saved his life when his heart had stopped. But she could not save Covenant. The darkness was complete, and she could not move.

But then the Raver disappeared. Its presence burst like an invisible bubble; sunlight and vision rushed back over the ship. Covenant stood motionless near the rail, as distinct in her sight as if he wore a penumbra of fire. All the rats that could still move were scrabbling in his direction. But now they were driven by their fears, not by the Raver. Instead of trying to harm him, they ran headlong into the Sea.

Linden had taken two steps toward him before her knees failed. The relief of the Raver's flight turned her muscles to water. If Cail had not caught her, she would have fallen.

As she started forward again, Covenant looked down at his leg, saw the blood.

Everyone else was silent. The Giantship lay still as if it had been nailed to the water. The atmosphere seemed to sweat as realization whitened his features. His eyes widened; his lips fumbled denials; his hands pleaded at the empty air.

Then she reached him. He stumbled backward, sat down on the coiled hawser. At once, she stooped to his leg, pulled his pants up to the knee.

The rat-bite had torn a hunk out of his shin between the bones. It was not a large wound, though it bled copiously. For anyone else, the chief danger would have arisen from infection. Even without her bag, she could have treated that.

But before she could act, Covenant's whole frame sprang rigid. The force of the convulsion tore a curse from his corded throat. His legs scissored; the involuntary violence of his muscles knocked her away. Only Brinn's celerity kept him from cracking his head open as he tumbled off the coil.

Impossible that any venom could work so swiftly!

Blood suffused his face as he struggled to breathe. Spasms threatened to rend the ligatures of his chest and abdomen. His heels hammered the deck. His beard seemed to bristle like an excrudescence of pain.

Already, his right forearm had begun to darken as if an artery were haemorrhaging.

This was the way the venom affected him. Whether it was triggered by bee stings or spider bites, it focused on his forearm, where Marid's fangs had first pierced his flesh. And every relapse multiplied the danger horrendously.

“Hellfire!” His desperation sounded like fury. “Get back!”

She felt the pressure rising in him, poison mounting toward power, but she did not obey. Around her, the Giants retreated instinctively, mystified by what they were seeing. But Brinn and Hergrom held Covenant's shoulders and ankles, trying to restrain him. Cail touched Linden's arm in warning. She ignored him.

Frantically, she threw her senses into Covenant, scrambled to catch up with the venom so that she might attempt to block it-Once before, she had striven to help him and had learned that the new dimension of her sensitivity worked both ways: it made her so vulnerable that she experienced his illness as if it were her own, as if she were personally diseased by the Sunbane; but it also enabled her to succour him, shore up his life with her own. Now she raced to enter him, fighting to dam the virulence of the poison. His sickness flooded coruscations of malice through her; but she permitted the violation. The pounding along his veins was on its way to his brain.

She had to stop it. Without him, there would be no Staff of Law-no meaning for the quest; no hope for the Land; no escape for her from this mad world. His ill hurt her like a repetition of Gibbon-Raver's defilement; but she did not halt, did not—

She was already too late. Even with years of training in the use of her health-sense, she would have been no match for this poison. She lacked that power. Covenant tried to shout again. Then the wild magic went beyond all restraint.

A blast of white fire sprang from his right fist. It shot crookedly into the sky like a howl of pain and rage and protest, rove the air as if he were hurling his extremity at the sun.

The concussion flung Linden away like a bundle of rags. It knocked Brinn back against the railing. Several of the Giants staggered. Before the blast ended, it tore chunks from the roof of Foodfendhall and burned through two of the sails from bottom to top.

It also caught Cail. But he contrived to land in a way which absorbed Linden's fall. She was unhurt. Yet for a moment the sheer force of the detonation-the violence severing her from Covenant-stunned her. White fire and disease recoiled through her, blinding her senses. The entire Giantship seemed to whirl around her. She could not recover her balance, could not stifle the nausea flaming in her.

But then her sight veered back into focus, and she found herself staring at Vain. Sometime during the confusion, the Demondim-spawn had left his position on the foredeck, come aft to watch. Now he stood gazing at Covenant with a ghoulish grin on his teeth, as if he were near the heart of his secret purpose. The iron bands on his right wrist and left ankle-the heels of the Staff of Law-gleamed dully against his black skin.

Cail lifted Linden to her feet. He was saying, “You are acquainted with this ill. What must be done?”

Her nerves were raw with power-burn, shrill with anguish. Flame flushed across her skin. She wrenched free of Cail's grasp. Another spasm shook Covenant. His muscles tautened almost to the ripping point. His forearm was already black and swollen, fever-hot. Fire flickered on and off his ring. And every flicker struck at her exacerbated heart.

She did not know what to do.

No, that was not true. She knew. In the past, he had been brought back from this death by aliantha, by Hollian's succour, by the roborant of the Waynhim. Perhaps diamondraught would also serve. But he was already in the grip of delirium. How could he be induced to drink the liquor?

Brinn tried to approach Covenant. A white blast tore half the rigging from the midmast, compelling Brinn to retreat. Its force heated Linden's cheeks like shame.

All the Haruchai were looking at her. The Giants were looking at her. The First held her silence like a sword. They were waiting for her to tell them what to do.

She knew the answer. But she could not bear it. To possess him? Try to take over his mind, force him to hold back his power, accept diamondraught! After what she had seen in Joan?

His blast still wailed in her, Gritting her teeth against that cry, she rasped, “I can't do it.”

Without conscious decision, she started to leave, to flee.

The First stopped her. “Chosen.” The Swordmain's tone was hard. “We have no knowledge of this illness. That such harm should come from the bite of one rat is beyond our ken. Yet he must be aided. Were he merely a man, he would require aid. But I have named him Giantfriend. I have placed the Search into his hands. He must be given succour.”

“No.” Linden was full of fear and revulsion. The horror was too intimate: Gibbon had taught her to understand it too well. That she was powerless-that all her life had been a lie! Her eyes bled tears involuntarily. In desperation, she retorted, “He can take care of himself.”

The First's stare glinted dangerously; and Honninscrave started to expostulate. Linden denied them.

“He can do it. When we first showed up here, he had a knife stuck in his chest, and he healed that. The Clave slit his wrists, and he healed that. He can do it.” As she articulated them, the words turned to falsehood in her mouth. But the alternative was heinous to her beyond bearing.

In shame, she thrust her way past the First toward Foodfendhall. The combined incomprehension and anger of so many brave, valuable people pressed against her back. To Possess him? His power had come close to burning through her as virulently as Gibbon's touch. Was this how Lord Foul meant to forge her for desecration? Pressure and protest sent her half running through the hall to the empty foredeck.

Afterimages of Covenant's blast continued to dismay her senses for a long time. She had been hugging one of the cross-supports of the rail near the prow for half the morning before she realised that the ship was not moving.

Its motionlessness was not due to the damage Covenant had done. The gear of the midmast hung in shambles still. Erratic bursts of wild magic had thwarted every attempt at repair. But even with whole canvas on all three masts, Starfare's Gem would have lain dead in the water. There was no wind. No movement in the Sea at all. The ocean had become a blank echo of the sky-deep azure and flat, as empty of life as a mirror. The dromond might have been fused to the surface of the water. Its sails hung like cerements from the inanimate yards: lines and shrouds which had seemed alive in the wind now dangled like stricken things, shorn of meaning. And the heat-The sun was all that moved across the Sea. Shimmerings rose from the decks as though Starfare's Gem were losing substance, evaporating off the face of the deep.

Heat made the dull trudge of Linden's thoughts giddy. She half believed that the Raver had taken away the wind, that this calm was part of Lord Foul's design. Trap the ship where it lay, impale the quest until Covenant's venom gnawed through the cords of his life. And then what? Perhaps in his delirium he would sink the dromond before he died. Or perhaps he would be able to withhold that blow. Then the ring and the quest would be left to someone else.

To her?

Dear God! she protested vainly. I can't!

But she could not refute that logic. Why else had Marid feinted toward her before attacking Covenant-why else had Gibbon spared her, spoken to her, touched her-if not to confirm her in her paralyzing fear, the lesson of her own ill? And why else had the old man on Haven Farm told her to Be true? Why indeed, if both he and the Despiser had not known that she would eventually inherit Covenant's ring?

What kind of person had she become?

At painful intervals, blasts of wild magic sent tremors of apprehension through the stone. Repeatedly Covenant cried out, “Never! Never give it to him!” hurling his refusal at the blind sky. He had become a man she could not touch. After all her years of evasion, she had finally received the legacy of her parents. She had no choice but to possess him or to let him die.

When Cail came to speak with her, she did not turn her head, did not let him see her forlornness, until he demanded, “Linden Avery, you must.”

At that, she rounded on him. He was sweating faintly. Even his Haruchai flesh was not immune to this heat. But his manner denied any discomfort. He seemed so secure in his rectitude mat she could not hold herself from snapping at him, “No. You swore to protect him. I didn't.”

“Chosen.” He used her title with a tinge of asperity. “We have done what lies within our reach. But none can approach him. His fire lashes out at all who draw near. Brinn has been burned-but that is nothing. Diamond? — aught will speed his healing. Consider instead the Giants. Though they can withstand fire, they cannot bear the force of his white ring. When the First sought to near him, she was nigh thrown from the deck. And the Anchormaster, Sevinhand, also assayed the task. When he regained consciousness, he named himself fortunate that he had suffered no more than a broken arm.”

Burned, Linden thought dumbly. Broken. Her hands writhed against each other. She was a doctor; she should already have gone to treat Brinn and Sevinhand. But even at this distance Covenant's illness assaulted her sanity. She had made no decision. Her legs would not take one step in that direction. She could not help him without violating him. She had no other power. That was what she had become.

When she did not speak, Cail went on, "It is a clean break, which the Storesmaster is able to tend. I do not speak of that. I desire you to understand only that we are surpassed. We cannot approach him. Thus it falls to you. You must succour him.

“We believe that he will not strike at you. You are his nearest companion-a woman of his world. Surely even in his madness he will know you and withhold his fire. We have seen that he holds you in his heart.”

In his heart? Linden almost cried out. But still Cail addressed her as if he had been charged with a speech and meant to deliver it in the name of his duty.

Yet perhaps in that we are misled. Perhaps he would strike at you also. Yet you must make the attempt. You are possessed of a sight which no Haruchai or Giant can share or comprehend. When the Sunbane-sickness came upon you, you perceived that voure would restore you. When your ankle was beyond all other aid, you guided its setting." The demand in his expressionless mien was as plain as a fist. “Chosen, you must gaze upon him. You must find the means to succour him.”

“Must?” she returned huskily. Cail's flat insistence made her wild. “You don't know what you're saying. The only way I can help him is go into him and take over. Like the Sunbane. Or a Raver. It would be bad enough if I were as innocent as a baby. But what do you think I'll turn into if I get that much power?”

She might have gone on, might have cried at him, And he'll hate me for it! He'll never trust me again! Or himself. But the simple uselessness of shouting at Cail stopped her. Her intensity seemed to have no purpose. His uncompromising visage leeched it away from her. Instead of protesting further, she murmured dimly, “I'm already too much like Gibbon.”

Cail's gaze did not waver from her face. “Then he will die.”

I know. God help me. She turned from the Haruchai, hung her arms over the cross-supports of the rail to keep herself from sagging to her knees. Possess him?

After a moment, she felt Cail withdrawing toward the afterdeck. Her hands twisted against each other as if their futility threatened to drive them mad. She had spent so many years training them, teaching them to heal, trusting them. Now they were good for nothing. She could not so much as touch Covenant.

Starfare's Gem remained becalmed throughout the day. The heat baked down until Linden thought that her bones would melt; but she could not resolve the contradictions in her. Around the ship, the Giants were strangely silent. They seemed to wait with bated breath for Covenant's eruptions of fire, his ranting shouts. No hint of wind stirred the sails. At times, she wanted to fall overboard-not to immerse herself in the Sea's coolness, though anything cool would have been bliss to her aching nerves-but simply to break the unrelieved stillness of the water. Through the stone, she could feel Covenant's delirium worsening.

At noon and again at eventide, Cail brought her food. He performed this task as if no conflict between them could alter his duty; but she did not eat. Though she had not taken one step toward Covenant, she shared his ordeal. The same rack of venom and madness on which he was stretched tortured her as well. That was her punishment for failure-to participate in the anguish she feared to confront.

The old man on Haven Farm had said, You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. Not fail? she ached to herself. Good God! As for love, she had already denied it. She did not know how to turn her life around.

So the day ended, and later the waxing moon began to ascend over the lifeless Sea, and still she stood at the railing on the long foredeck, staring sightlessly into the blank distance. Her hands knotted together and unknotted like a nest of snakes. Sweat darkened the hair at her temples, drew faint lines down through the erosions which marked her face; but she paid no heed. The black water lay unmoving and benighted, as empty of life as the air. The moon shone as if it were engrossed in its own thoughts; but its reflection sprawled on the flat surface like a stillborn. High above her, the sails hung limp among their shrouds, untouched by any rumour or foretaste of wind. Again and again, Covenant's voice rose ranting into the hot night. Occasional white lightning paled the stars. Yet she did not respond, though she knew he could not heal himself. The Despiser's venom was a moral poison, and he had no health-sense to guide his fire. Even if his power had been hers to wield as she willed, she might not have been able to burn out that ill without tearing up his life by the roots.

Then Pitchwife came toward her. She heard his determination to speak in the rhythm of his stride. But when she turned her head to him, the sight of her flagrant visage silenced him. After a moment, he retreated with a damp sheen of moonlight or tears in his misshapen eyes.

She thought then that she would be left alone. But soon she felt another Giant looming nearby. Without looking at him, she recognized Seadreamer by his knotted aura. He had come to share his muteness with her. He was the only Giant who suffered anything comparable to her vision, and the pervading sadness of his mood held no recrimination. Yet after a time s silence seemed to pull at her, asking for answers.

Because I'm afraid.“ His muteness enabled her to speak. ”terrifies me.

I can understand what Covenant's doing. His love for the

Land-“ She envied Covenant his passion, his accessible heart. She had nothing like it. ”I'd do anything to help him. But I don't have that kind of power."

Then she could not stop; she had to try to explain herself. Her voice slipped out into the night without touching the air or the Sea. But her companion's gentle presence encouraged her.

“It's all possession. Lord Foul possessed Joan to make Covenant come to the Land.” Joan's face had worn a contortion of predatory malice which still haunted Linden. She could not forget the woman's thirst for Covenant's blood. “A Raver possessed Marid to get that venom into him. A Raver possessed the na-Mhoram of the Clave so that the Clave would serve the Sunbane. And the Sunbane itself! Foul is trying to possess the Law. He wants to make himself the natural order of the Earth. Once you start believing in evil, the greatest evil there is is possession. It's a denial of life-of humanity. Whatever you possess loses everything. Just because you think you're doing it for reasons like pity or help doesn't change what it is. I'm a doctor, not a Raver.”

She tried to give her insistence the force of affirmation; but it was not true enough for that.

“He needs me to go into him. Take over. Control him so he can drink some diamondraught, stop righting the people who want to help him. But that's evil. Even if I'm trying to save him.” Struggling to put the truth into words, she said, “To do it, I'd have to take his power away from him.”

She was pleading for Seadreamer's comprehension. “When I was in Revelstone, Gibbon touched me. I learned something about myself then.” The na-Mhoram had told her she was evil. That was the truth. “There's a part of me that wants to do it. Take over him. Take his power. I don't have any of my own, and I want it.” Want it. All her life, she had striven for power, for effectiveness against death. For the means to transcend her heritage-and to make restitution. If she had possessed Covenant's power, she would have gladly torn Gibbon soul from body in the name of her own crime. “That's what paralyzes me. I've spent my life trying to deny evil. When it shows up, I can't escape it.” She did not know how to escape the contradiction between her commitment to life and her yearning for the dark might of death. Her father's suicide had taught her a hunger she had satisfied once and dreaded to face again. The conflict of her desires had no answer. In its own way, Gibbon-Raver's touch had been no more horrible than her father's death; and the black force of her memories made her shiver on the verge of crying.

“Yet you must aid him.”

The hard voice pierced Linden. She turned sharply, found herself facing the First of the Search. She had been so caught up in what she was saying to Seadreamer, so locked into herself, that she had not felt the First's approach.

The First glared at her sternly. “I grant that the burden is terrible to you. That is plain.” She bore herself like a woman who had made a fierce decision of her own. “But the Search has been given into his hands. It must not fail.”

With a brusque movement, she drew her broadsword, held it before her as though she meant to enforce Linden's compliance with keen iron. Linden pressed her back against the rail in apprehension; but the First bent down, placed her glaive on the deck between them. Then she drew herself erect, fixed Linden with the demand of her stare. “Have you the strength to wield my blade?”

Involuntarily, Linden looked down at the broadsword. Gleaming densely in the moonlight, it appeared impossibly heavy.

“Have you the strength to lift it from where it lies?”

Linden wrenched her eyes back to the First in dumb protest.

The Swordmain nodded as if Linden had given her the reply she sought. “Nor have I the insight to act against the Giantfriend's illness. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. I am the First of the Search. We cannot bear each other's burdens.”

Her gaze shed midnight into Linden's upturned face. “Yet if you do not shoulder the lot which has befallen you, then I swear by my glaive that I will perform whatever act lies within my strength. He will not accept any approach. Therefore I will risk my people, and Starfare's Gem itself, to distract him. And while he strikes at them, with this sword I will sever the envenomed arm from his body. I know no other way to rid him of that ill-and us of the peril of his power. If fortune smiles upon us, we will be able to staunch the wound ere his life is lost.”

Sever? Sudden weakness flooded through Linden. If the first succeeded-! In a flash of vision, she saw that great Jade hacking like an execution at Covenant's shoulder. And blood, dark under the waxing moon, it would gush out almost directly from his heart. If it were not stopped in an instant, nothing could save him. She was a world away from the equipment she would need to give him transfusions, suture the wound, keep his heart beating until his blood pressure was restored. That blow could be as fatal as the knife-thrust which had once impaled his chest.

The back of her head struck the cross-support of the railing as she sank to the deck; and for a moment pain laboured in the bones of her skull. Sever? He had already lost two fingers to surgeons who knew no other answer to his illness. If he lived — She groaned. Ah, if he lived, how could she ever meet his gaze to tell him that she had done nothing-that she had stood by in her cowardice and allowed his arm to be cut away?

“No.” Her hands covered her face. Her craven flesh yearned to deny what she was saying. He would have reason to hate her if she permitted the First's attempt. And to hate her forever if she saved his life at the cost of his independent integrity. Was she truly this hungry for power? “I'll try.”

Then Cail was at her side. He helped her to her feet. As she leaned on his shoulder, he thrust a flask into her hands. The faint smell of diluted diamondraught reached her. Fumbling weakly, she pulled the flask to her mouth and drank.

Almost at once, she felt the liquor exerting its analystic potency. Her pulse carried life back into her muscles. The pain in her head withdrew to a dull throbbing at the base of her neck. The moonlight seemed to grow firmer as her vision cleared.

She emptied the flask, striving to suck strength from it-any kind of strength, anything which might help her withstand the virulence of the venom. Then she forced herself into motion toward the afterdeck.

Beyond Foodfendhall, she came into the light of lanterns. They had been placed along the roof of the housing and around the open deck so that the Giants and Haruchai could watch Covenant from a relatively safe distance. They shed a yellow illumination which should have comforted the stark night. But their light reached upward to the wreckage of sails and rigging. And within the pool they cast, all the blood and bodies of the rats had been burned away. Scars of wild magic marked the stone like lines of accusation pointing toward Covenant's rigid anguish.

The sight of him was almost too much for Linden. From head to foot, he looked force-battered, as if he had been beaten with truncheons. His eyes were wide and staring; but she could see no relict of awareness or sanity in them. His lips had been torn by the convulsive gnashing of his teeth. His forehead glistened with extreme sweat. In his illness, the beard which had formerly given him a heuristic aspect, an air of prophecy, now looked like a reification of his leprosy. And his right arm—

Hideously black, horrendously swollen, it twitched and grasped beside him, threatening his friends and himself with every wince. The dull silver of his wedding band constricted his second finger like blind cruelty biting into his defenceless flesh. And at his shoulder, the arm of his T-shirt was stretched to the tearing point. Fever radiated from the swelling as if his bones had become fagots for the venom.

That emanation burned against Linden's face even though she stood no closer to him than the verge of the lantern-light. He might already have died if he had not been able to vent the pressure of the poison through his ring. That release was all that kept his illness within bounds his flesh could bear.

Unsteadily, she gestured for Cail to retreat. Her hands shook like wounded birds. He hesitated; but Brinn spoke, and Cail obeyed. The Giants held themselves back, locking their breath behind their teeth. Linden stood alone in the margin of the light as if it were the littoral of a vast danger.

She stared at Covenant. The scars on the deck demonstrated beyond any argument that she would never get near enough to touch him. But that signified nothing. No laying on of hands could anele his torment. She needed to reach him with her soul. Take hold of him, silence his defences long enough to allow some diamondraught to be poured down his throat. Possess him.

Either that or tear his power from him. If she was strong enough. Her health-sense made such an attempt feasible. But he was potent and delirious; and nothing in her life had prepared her to believe that she could wrestle with him directly for control of his ring. If she failed, he might kill her in the struggle. And if she succeeded—

She decided to aim herself against his mind. That seemed to be the lesser evil.

Trembling, she fought her visceral pariesis, compelled her tightened legs to take two steps into the light. Three. There

she stopped. Sinking to the stone, she sat with her knees hugged protectively against her chest. The becalmed air felt dead in her lungs. A waifish voice in the back of her brain pleaded for mercy or flight.

But she did not permit herself to waver. She had made her decision. Defying her mortality, her fear of evil and possession and failure, she opened her senses to him.

She began at his feet, hoping to insinuate herself into his flesh, sneak past his defences. But her first penetration almost made her flee. His sickness leaped the gap to her nerves like ghoul-fire, threatening her self-mastery. For a moment, she remained frozen in fear.

Then her old stubbornness came back to her. It had made her who she was. She had dedicated her life to healing. If she could not use medicine and scalpel, she would use whatever other tools were available. Squeezing her eyes shut to block out the distraction of his torment, she let her perceptions flow up Covenant's legs toward his heart.

His fever grew in her as her awareness advanced. Her pulse laboured; paresthesia flushed across her skin; the ice of deadened nerves burned in her toes, sent cramps groping through her arches into her calves. She was being sucked toward the abyss of his venom. Blackness crowded the night, dimming the lanterns around her. Power-she wanted power. Her lungs shared his shuddering. She felt in her own chest the corrosion which gnawed at his heart, making the muscle flaccid, the beat limp. Her temples began to ache.

He was already a wasteland, and his illness and power ravaged her. She could hardly hold back the horror pounding at the back of her thoughts, hardly ignore the self-protective impetus to abandon this mad doom. Yet she went on creeping through him, studying the venom for a chance to spring at his mind.

Suddenly, a convulsion knotted him. Her shared reactions knocked her to the deck. Amid the roil of his delirium, she felt him surging toward power. She was so open to him that any blast would sear through her like a firestorm.

Desperation galvanized her resolve. Discarding stealth, she hurled her senses at his head, tried to dive into his brain.

For an instant, she was caught in the throes of wild magic as he thrashed toward an explosion. Images whirled insanely into her: the destruction of the Staff of Law; men and women being bled like cattle to feed the Banefire; Lena and rape; the two-fisted knife-blow with which he had slain a man she did not know; the slashing of his wrists. And power-white fire which crashed through the Clave, turned Santonin and the Stonemight to tinder, went reaving among the Riders to garner a harvest of blood. Power. She could not control him. He shredded her efforts as if her entire being and will were made of brittle old leaves. In his madness, he reacted to her presence as if she were a Raver.

She cried out to him. But the outrage of his ring blew her away.

For a time, she lay buffeted by gusts of midnight. They echoed in her-men and women shed like cattle, guilt and delirium, wild magic made black by venom. Her whole body burned with the force of his blast. She wanted to scream, but could not master the spasms which convulsed her lungs.

But gradually the violence receded until it was contained within her head; and the dark began to take shape around her. She was sitting half upright, supported by Cail's arms. Vaguely, she saw the First, Honninscrave, and Pitchwife crouched before her. A lantern revealed the tight concern in their faces.

When she fought her gaze into focus on the Giants, Honninscrave breathed in relief, “Stone and Sea!” Pitchwife chortled, “By the Power that remains, Chosen! You are hardy. A lesser blast broke Sevinhand Anchormaster's arm in two places.”

He knew it was me, Linden answered, unaware of her silence. He didn't let it kill me.

“The fault is mine,” said the First grimly. “I compelled you to this risk. Take no blame upon yourself. Now nothing lies within our power to aid him.”

Linden's mouth groped to form words. “Blame-?”

“He has put himself beyond our reach. For life or death, we are helpless now.”

Put-? Linden grappled with the surrounding night to look toward Covenant. The First nodded at Honninscrave. He moved aside, unblocking Linden's view.

When she saw Covenant, she almost wailed aloud.

He lay clenched and rigid, as though he would never move again, with his arms locked at his sides and need like a rictus on his lips. But he was barely visible through the sheath of wild magic which encased him. Shimmering argent covered him as completely as a caul.

Within his cocoon, his chest still struggled for breath, heart still beat weakly. The venom went on swelling his right arm, went on gnawing at his life. But she did not need any other eyes to tell her that nothing known on Starfare's Gem could breach this new defence. His caul was as indefeasible as leprosy.

This was his delirious response to her attempted possession. Because she had tried to take hold of his mind, he had put himself beyond all succour. He would not have been less accessible if he had withdrawn to another world altogether.

foodedall

Four: The Nicor of the Deep

HELPLESSLY, Linden watched herself go numb with shock. The residue of Covenant's leprosy seemed to well up in her, deadening her. She had done that to him? Brinn went stubbornly about the task of proving to himself that no strength or tool he could wield was capable of penetrating Covenant's sheath; but she hardly noticed the Haruchai. It was her doing.

Because she had tried to possess him. And because he had spared her the full consequences of his power.

Then Brinn blurred and faded as tears disfocused her vision. She could no longer see Covenant, except as a pool of hot argent in the streaked lambency of the lanterns. Was this why Lord Foul had chosen her? So that she would cause Covenant's death?

Yes. She had done such things before.

She retreated into the numbness as if she needed it, deserved it. But the hands which grasped her shoulders were gentle and demanding. Softly, they insisted on her attention, urged her out of her inner morass. They were kind and refused to be denied. When she blinked her gaze clear, she found herself looking into Pitchwife's pellucid eyes.

He sat in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. The deformation of his spine brought his misshapen face down almost to her level. His lips smiled crookedly.

“It is enough, Chosen,” he breathed in a tone of compassion. “This grief skills nothing. It is as the First has said. The fault is not yours.”

For a moment, he turned his head away. “And also not yours, my wife,” he said to the shadow of the First. “You could not have foreknown this pass.”

Then his attention returned to Linden. “He lives yet, Chosen. He lives. And while he lives, there must be hope. Fix your mind upon that. While we live, it is the meaning of our lives to hope.”

"I "- She wanted to speak, wanted to bare her dismay to Pitchwife's empathy. But the words were too terrible to be uttered.

His hands tightened slightly, pulling her posture more upright. “We do not comprehend this caul which he has woven about him. We lack your sight. You must guide us now.” His gentleness tugged at the edges of her heart. “Is this power something to be feared? Has he not perchance brought it into being to preserve his life?”

His words seemed to cast her gaze toward Covenant. She could barely see him through his shield. But she could see Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood near Covenant, and all suggestion of grinning was gone from his black mien. He bore himself as he always did, his hidden purpose untouched by any other morality. He was not even alive in any normal sense. But he concentrated on Covenant's wracked form as if together they were being put to the question of a cruel doom.

“No.” Linden's voice husked roughly out of her emptiness. “He still has that venom. He's dying in there.”

“Then”-Pitchwife's tone brought her back to his probing-“we must find the means to un-weave this power, so that he may be succoured.”

At that, her stomach turned over in protest. She wanted to cry out, Weren't you watching? I tried to possess him. This is my doing. But her ire was useless; and the Giant's empathy sloughed it away. Her remaining bitterness compressed itself into one word: “How?”

'Ah, Chosen.“ Pitchwife smiled like a shrug. ”That you must tell me."

She flinched, closed her eyes. Unconsciously, her hands covered her face. Had she not done enough harm? Did he want her to actually hold the knife that killed Covenant?

But Pitchwife did not relent. “We lack your sight,” he repeated in quiet suasion. “You must guide us. Think on hope. Clearly, we cannot pierce this caul. Very well. Then we must answer it with understanding. What manner of power is it? What has transpired in his mind, that he is driven to such defence? What need is occulted within him? Chosen.” Again his hands tightened, half lifting her to her feet. “How may we appeal to him, so that he will permit our aid?”

“Appeal-?” The suggestion drew a gasp of bile from her. Her arms dropped, uncovering her indignation. “He's dying! He's deaf and blind with venom and delirium! Do you think I can just go over there and ask him to please stop defending himself?”

Pitchwife cocked an eyebrow at her anger; but he did not flinch. A smile softened his features. “It is good,” he said through his twisted grin. “If you are capable of wrath, then you are also capable of hope.”

She started to spit at him, Hope? But he overrode her firmly. “Very well. You see no means of appeal. But there are other questions to which you might reply, if you chose.”

“What do you want from me?” she burned into his face. "Do you want me to convince you that it's my fault? Well, it is. He must've thought I was a Raver or something. He was delirious-in terrible pain. The last thing he knew before he relapsed, he was being attacked by those rats. How was he supposed to know I was trying to help him? He didn't even know it was me. Until too late.

“It's like-” She fumbled momentarily for a description. “Like hysterical paralysis. He's so afraid of his ring-and so afraid Foul's going to get it. And he's a leper. His numbness makes him think he can't control the power. He hasn't got the nerves to control it. Even without the venom, he's afraid all the time. He never knows when he's going to kill somebody else.”

Words poured from her. In the back of her mind, she relived what she had learned before Covenant hurled her away. As she spoke, those inchoate images took shape for her.

"And he knew what was happening to him. He's had relapses before. When the venom came over him, probably the only conscious thing he had left was fear. He knew he was defenceless. Not against us-against himself. Against Foul. He was already full of power when I tried to take over. What else could he do? He struck back. And then-"

For an instant, she faltered in pain. But she could not halt the momentum of the words.

“Then he saw it was me. For all he knew, he might've killed me. Exactly the kind of thing that terrified him most.” She gritted herself to keep from shivering in dismay. “So he closed all the doors. Shut himself off. Not to keep us out. To keep himself in.”

Deliberately, she fixed Pitchwife with her glare. “There is no way to appeal to him. You can stand there and shout at him until it breaks your heart, and he won't hear you. He's trying to protect you.” But then she ran out of ire, and her voice trailed away as she conceded lornly, “Us.” Me.

Around her, silence spread out into the stagnant night. Starfare's Gem lay still as if the loss of wind had slain it. The Giants remained motionless, becalmed, as if their vitality were leaking out of them into the dead Sea. Her speech seemed to hang like futility in the air, denying hope. She could not find any end to the harm she had inflicted on her companions.

But when Pitchwife spoke again, his resilience astonished her. “Linden Avery, I hear you.” No hue or timbre of despair marred his voice. He talked as though his lifetime as a cripple had taught him to overcome anything. “But this despond ill becomes us. By my heart, I flounder to think that so many Giants may be rendered mirthless! If words have such power, then we are behooved to consider them again. Come, Chosen. You have said that Covenant Giantfriend seeks to preserve us, and that he will not hear us if we speak. Very well. What will he hear? What language will touch him?”

Linden winced. His insistence simply reaffirmed her failure.

“What does he desire?” the Giant went on steadily, “What need or yearning lies uppermost in him? Mayhap if we provide an answer to his heart, he will perceive that we are not harmed-that his protection is needless-and he will let his power go.”

She gaped at him. His question took her by surprise; and her response came automatically, without forethought. “The One Tree. The quest.” Covenant's images were still in her. Pitchwife's calm drew them out of her. “He doesn't know what else to do. He needs a new Staff of Law. And we're not moving-”

At that, Pitchwife grinned.

An inchoate prescience shocked her. She surged at him, grabbed for the front of his sark. “The One Tree? He's dying! You don't even know where it is!”

Pitchwife's eyes gleamed in response. From somewhere nearby, the Storesmaster's blunt voice said, “It may be done. I have taken soundings. This Sea is apt for Nicor.”

At once, the First said harshly, “Then we will make the attempt.”

A chuckle widened Pitchwife's grin. His hale aura stroked Linden's senses with a steady confidence she could not comprehend. “There, Chosen,” he said. “Hope. We cannot bespeak Covenant Giantfriend, to say that we are well. But we can move Starfare's Gem. Mayhap he will feel that movement and be consoled.”

Move-? Linden's lips formed words she could not utter. You're kidding.

Heft Galewrath addressed her stolidly. “I can make no beginning until dawn. We must have light. And then the answer-if I am answered-may be slow in coming. Will the Giantfriend endure so long?”

“He-” Linden fought the extremity which closed her throat. Her brain kept repeating, Move Starfare's Gem? Without wind? “I don't know. He has the power. Maybe-maybe what he's doing will slow down the venom. He's shut his mind to everything else. Maybe he's stopped the venom too. If he has-” She struggled to achieve a coherent assessment. “He'll live until the venom eats through his heart. Or until he starves to death.”

Move Starfare's Gem?

Abruptly, Honninscrave started shouting orders. Around him, Giants sprang into motion as if they had been brought back to life by a sense of purpose. Their feet spread new energy through the stone as they hastened to their tasks. Several of them went below toward the storage-lockers; but many more swung up into the rigging, began to furl the sails. They worked on all three masts at once, repairing the damage which behung the midmast while they clewed up and lashed the canvas fore and aft.

Linden watched them as if the confusion in her head had become an external madness. They meant to move the ship. Therefore they furled the sails? Pitchwife had already followed the First and Galewrath forward; Honninscrave had positioned himself on the wheeldeck. And Seadreamer, who stood nearby with a private smoulder in his eyes, could not speak. She felt like a lost child as she turned to Cail.

Instead of replying, he offered her a bowl of food and another flask of macerated diamondraught.

She accepted them because she did not know what else to do.

Deliberately, she moved back into the lantern light around Covenant, sat down with her back to Foodfendhall as close to him as her nerves could bear. Her viscera still trembled at the taste of his illness, but she forced herself to remain near enough to monitor his shield-near enough to act promptly if the shield failed. And near enough to keep watch on Vain. The Demondim-spawn's strange attentiveness had not wavered; but his obsidian flesh gave no hint of his intent. With a sigh, she leaned against the stone and compelled herself to eat.

What else could she do? She did not believe that his shield would fail. It looked as absolute as his torment. And Vain went on gazing at that caul as though he expected the Unbeliever to drop through the bottom of the world at any moment.

Later, she slept.

She awoke in the first muggy gloaming of the becalmed dawn. Without their sails, the masts above her looked skeletal against the paling sky, like boughs shorn of leaves, of life. Starfare's Gem was little more than a floating rock under her-a slab of stone crucified between water and sky by the death of all winds. And Covenant, too, was dying: his respiration had become perceptibly shallower, more ragged. He wore his power intimately, like a winding-sheet.

The afterdeck was empty of Giants; and only two remained on the wheeldeck, Sevinhand Anchormaster and a steerswoman. No one was in the rigging, though Linden thought she glimpsed a figure sitting high overhead in Horizonscan, the lookout. Except for herself. Covenant, and Vain, Brinn, Cail, Hergrom, and Ceer, everyone had gone forward. She felt their activity through the stone.

For a while, she could not decide what to do. Her desire to learn what the Giants were about tugged at her. At the same time, she knew she belonged beside Covenant. Yet she obviously could not help him, and her uselessness wore at her. His Power, like his mind, was beyond her reach. Soon she became too tense to remain where she was. As a compromise, she went and ascended to the wheeldeck to examine Sevinhand's broken arm.

The Anchormaster was lean for a Giant, and his old face was engraved with an unGiantlike melancholy. In him, the characteristic cheer of his people had been eroded by an habitual grief. The lines on his cheeks looked like galls. But his mien lightened as Linden approached, and the smile with which he answered her desire to inspect his arm was plainly genuine.

He carried his limb in a sling. When she slipped back the cloth, she saw that the forearm had been properly splinted. Probing his skin with her fingers, she discerned that Cail had reported the injury accurately: the breaks were clean-and cleanly set. Already the bones had begun to knit.

She nodded her satisfaction, turned to go back to Covenant. But Sevinhand stopped her.

She looked at him inquiringly. His melancholy had returned. He remained silent for a moment while he considered her. Then he said, “Heft Galewrath will attempt a calling of Nicor. That is perilous.” The flinch of his eyes showed that he was personally acquainted with the danger. “Mayhap there will be sore and instant need for a healer. It is Galewrath who tends the healing of Starfare's Gem-yet the gravest peril will befall her. Will you not offer your aid?” He nodded forward. “Surely the Haruchai will summon you with all speed, should you be required by Covenant Giantfriend.”

His earnest gaze moved her. The Giants had already shown their concern and support for her in many ways. Seadreamer had carried her out of Sarangrave Flat after the breaking of her ankle. And Pitchwife had tried several times to demonstrate that there were other smiles in the world than the fatal one Covenant had given Joan. She welcomed a chance to offer some kind of service in return. And she was clearly valueless to Covenant as matters stood. Vain did not appear to pose any threat.

Turning to Cail, she said, “I'm counting on you.” His slight bow of acceptance reassured her. The flatness of his visage seemed to promise that his people could be trusted beyond any possibility of dereliction or inadequacy.

As she left the wheeldeck, she felt Sevinhand's relief smiling wanly at her back.

Hastening across the long afterdeck, she passed through

Foodfendhall toward the prow of the ship. There she joined a milling press of Giants. Most were busy at tasks she did not understand; but Pitch wife noticed her arrival and moved to her side. “You are well come, Chosen,” he said lightly. “Perchance we will have need of you.”

“That's what Sevinhand said.”

His gaze flicked aft like a wince, then returned to Linden. “He speaks from knowledge.” His misformed eyes cast a clear echo of the Anchormaster's sorrow. "At one time-perhaps several brief human lives past-Sevinhand Mastered another Giantship, and Seatheme his wife served as Storesmaster. Ah, that is a tale worth the telling. But I will curtail it. The time is not apt for that story. And you will have other inquiries.

“To speak shortly-” Abruptly, he grimaced in vexation. “Stone and Sea, Chosen! It irks my heart to utter such a tale without its full measure. I am surpassed to credit that any people who speak briefly are in good sooth alive at all.” But then his eyes widened as if he were startled by his own intensity, and his expression cleared. “Nevertheless. I bow to the time.” He saluted Linden as if he were laughing at himself. "Shortly, then. Sevinhand and his Giantship sailed a Sea which we name the Soulbiter, for it is ever fell and predictless, and no craft passes it without cost. There a calm such as we now suffer came upon them. Many and many a day the vessel lay stricken, and no life stirred the sails. Water and food became dire. Therefore the choice was taken to attempt a calling of Nicor.

“As Storesmaster, the task fell chiefly to Seatheme, for such was her training and skill. She was a Giant to warm the heart, and-” Again, he stopped. Ducking his head, he passed a hand over his eyes, muttered, “Ah, Pitchwife. Shortly.” When he looked up once more, he was smiling crookedly through his tears. “Chosen, she mistimed the catch. And rare is the Giant who returns from the jaws of the Nicor”

Linden met his gaze with an awkwardness in her throat. She wanted to say something, but did not know how to offer comfort to a Giant. She could not match his smile.

Beyond the foremast, the crew had completed the construction of three large objects under Galewrath's direction. They were coracles-boats made of leather stretched over wooden frames, each big enough to hold two Giants. But their sides rose and curved so that each vessel was three-quarters of a sphere. A complex of hawsers and iron rings connected the coracles to each other; they had to be lifted and moved together. At Galewrath's orders, the boats were borne forward and pitched over the prow.

Guiding Linden with a touch on her shoulder, Pitchwife took her to a vantage from which she had a clear view of the coracles. They floated lightly on the flat Sea.

A moment later, the Storesmaster's blunt voice carried over the foredeck. “The calling of Nicor is hazardous, and none may be commanded to share it. If I am answered by one alone, mayhap it will be a rogue, and we will be assailed. If I am answered by many, this Sea will become a discomfortable swimming-place. And if I am not answered-” She shrugged brusquely. “For good or ill, the attempt must be made. The First has spoken. I require the aid of three.”

Without hesitation, several Giants stepped forward. Seadreamer moved to join them; but the First halted him, saying, “I will not risk the Earth-Sight.” Quickly, Galewrath chose three crewmembers. The rest went to uncoil a rope as thick as Linden's thigh from its cablewell near the foremast. This hawser they fed down toward the coracles.

The Storesmaster looked to Honninscrave and the First for parting words. But the First said simply, “Have care, Heft Galewrath. I must not lose you.”

Together, Galewrath and her three companions dove overboard.

Swimming with accustomed ease, they moved to the coracles, towing behind them the free hawser. When they reached the tackle connecting the boats, they threaded their line through a central iron ring. Then they pulled it toward the foremost coracle.

This craft formed the apex of a triangle pointing eastward. With a prodigious heave of her legs, Galewrath rose up in the water and flipped herself over the edge into the coracle. It rocked under her weight, but continued to float. She braced it as another Giant joined her. Then they accepted the hawser from the remaining swimmers.

The two separated, one to each of the outer coracles, as Galewrath and her partner tugged a length of cable from Starfare's Gem through the ring into their craft. When she was satisfied with the amount of line she had available, she began to knot a large loop into the end of the hawser.

As soon as the other Giants had boarded their coracles, they announced that they were ready. They sounded tense; but one was grinning fiercely, and the other could not resist her temptation to cast a mock bow toward Starfare's Gem, rocking her coracle as she clowned.

Heft Galewrath responded with a nod. Shifting her weight, she tilted the edge of her craft down almost to the waterline. From that position, she placed an object that looked like a one-sided drumhead in the water. Her partner helped her balance the coracle so that it remained canted without shipping water.

Pitchwife tightened expectantly; but Galewrath's stolid mien gave no sign that she had undertaken anything out of the ordinary. From her belt, she drew out two leather-wrapped sticks and at once began to beat on the drum, sending an intricate, cross-grained rhythm into the Sea.

Faintly through the stone, Linden felt that beat carrying past the keel, spreading outward like a summons.

“Pitchwife.” She was still conscious of Covenant, though the intervening Giants muffled her perception of him. He was like a bruise between her shoulder blades. But Galewrath held her attention. Anticipation of danger made her nervous. She needed to hear voices, explanations. “What the hell is going on?”

The deformed Giant glanced at her as if to gauge the implications of her acerbic tone. After a moment, he breathed softly, “A calling of Nicor. The Nicor of the Deep.”

That told her nothing. But Pitchwife seemed to understand her need. Before she could ask for a better answer, he went on, “Such calling is rarely greeted swiftly. Belike we confront a wait of some durance. I will tell you the tale.”

Behind her, most of the crew had left the prow. Only the First, Honninscrave, Seadreamer, and one or two others remained; the rest ascended the ratlines. Together, they kept watch on all the horizons.

'Chosen,“ Pitchwife murmured, ”have you heard the name of the Worm of the World's End?“ She shook her head. Well, no matter.” A gleam of quickening interest ran along his tone-a love for stories.

Galewrath's rhythm continued, complex and unvarying. As it thudded flatly into the dead air and the rising heat and the ea, it took on a plaintive cast, like a keening of loneliness, a call for companionship. Her arms rose and fell tirelessly.

“It is said among the Elohim, whose knowledge is wondrous, and difficult of contradiction”-Pitchwife conveyed a chortle of personal amusement-“that in the ancient and eternal youth of the cosmos, long ere the Earth came to occupy its place, the stars were as thick as sand throughout all the heavens. Where now we see multitudes of bright beings were formerly multitudes of multitudes, so that the cosmos was an ocean of stars from shore to shore, and the great depth of their present solitude was unknown to them-a sorrow which they could not have comprehended. They were the living peoples of the heavens, as unlike to us as gods. Grand and warm in their bright loveliness, they danced to music of their own making and were content.”

A rustle went through the Giants watching from the foremast, then subsided. Their keen sight had picked out something in the distance; but it had vanished.

"But far away across the heavens lived a being of another kind. The Worm. For ages it slumbered in peace-but when it awakened, as it awakens at the dawn of each new eon, it was afflicted with a ravenous hunger. Every creation contains destruction, as life contains death, and the Worm was destruction. Driven by its immense lust, it began to devour stars.

“Perhaps this Worm was not large among the stars, but its emptiness was large beyond measure, and it roamed the heavens, consuming whole seas of brightness, cutting great swaths of loneliness across the firmament. Writhing along the ages, avid and insatiable, it fed on all that lay within its reach, until the heavens became as sparsely peopled as a desert.”

As Linden listened, she tasted some of the reasons behind the Giants' love of stories. Pitchwife's soft narration wove a thread of meaning into the becalmed sky and the Sea. Such tales made the world comprehensible. The mood of his telling was sad; but its sadness did no harm.

"Yet the devoured stars were beings as unlike to us as gods, and no Worm or doom could consume their power without cost. Having fed hugely, the Worm became listless and gravid. Though it could not sleep, for the eon's end of its slumber had not come, it felt a whelming desire for rest. Therefore it curled its tail about itself and sank into quiescence.

"And while the Worm rested, the power of the stars wrought within it. From its skin grew excrescences of stone and soil, water and air, and these growths multiplied upon

themselves and multiplied until the very Earth beneath our feet took form. Still the power of the stars wrought, but now it gave shape to the surface of the Earth, forging the seas and the land. And then was brought forth life upon the Earth. Thus were born all the peoples of the Earth, the beasts of the land, the creatures of the deep-all the forests and greenswards from pole to pole. And thus from destruction came forth creation, as death gives rise to life.

“Therefore, Chosen,” said Pitchwife firmly, “we live, and strive, and seek to define the sense of our being. And it is good, for though we compose a scant blink across the eyes of eternity, yet while the blink lasts we choose what we will, create what we may, and share ourselves with each other as the stars did ere they were bereaved. But it must pass. The Worm does not slumber. It merely rests. And the time must come when it is roused, or rouses itself. Then it will slough off this skin of rock and water to pursue its hunger across the cosmos until eon's end and slumber. For that reason, it is named the Worm of the World's End.”

There Pitchwife fell silent. Linden glanced at him, saw his gaze fixed on Galewrath as though he feared the limitations of her strength. But the Storesmaster did not falter. While her partner balanced the coracle, she went on articulating her rhythm steadfastly, reaching out into the deeps for an answer. Ripples danced around the edges of the drum and were swallowed by the flat calm of the Sea.

Slowly, Pitchwife turned his eyes to Linden; but he seemed not to see her. His mind still wandered the paths of his tale. Gradually, however, he came back to himself. When his sight focused, he smiled in bemusement.

“Chosen,” he said lightly, as if to soften the import of his words, “it is said that the Nicor are offspring of the Worm.”

That announcement brought back her anxiety. It gave her her first hint of what the Giants were doing, how they meant to move the ship. Perhaps his tale was nothing more than a myth; but it accounted for the purpose which had galvanized the dromond. Implications of peril pulled her attention outward, sent her senses hunting over the inert Sea. She could hardly believe what she was thinking. Do they mean to capture-?

Before she could ask Pitchwife if she had understood him correctly, a distant thrumming like a sensation of speed touched her feet through the stone of Starfare's Gem. An instant later, a shout cracked across the masts.

“Nicor!”

The cry snatched her around. Searching the shrouds, she saw a Giant pointing southward.

Other shouts verified the first. Linden's gaze reached for the starboard horizon. But she could descry nothing. She held her breath, as if in that way she could force her vision into focus.

More with her feet than her ears, she heard Galewrath's rhythm change.

And the change was answered. Thudding beats echoed against the keel of the dromond. Something had heard Galewrath's call-and was replying.

Abruptly, the horizon broke as a surge of water like a bowwave rose out of the calm. The Sea piled upward as though a tremendous head were rushing forward just below the surface. The surge was still a great distance away, but it came toward the ship at a staggering rate. The wave slashed out to either side, climbing higher and higher until it looked large enough to swamp the Giantship.

Galewrath's rhythm took on a febrile edge, like pleading. But the answer did not vary, gave no sign that it understood. Yet it cast suggestions of power which made Linden's knees tremble.

Now through the water she could see a dark shape. It writhed like a serpent, and every heave of its form bespoke prodigious strength. As the Nicor came within jerrid-range of the vessel, its head-wave reached the height of the rails.

With the clarity of panic, Linden thought, It's going to ram us.

Then the Storesmaster hit her drum a resounding blow which split it; and the creature sounded.

Its long body flashed ahead of the wave as the Nicor angled into the depths. A moment later, the surge hit with a force which rocked the dromond. Linden staggered against Cail, rebounded from the railing. Starfare's Gem bobbed like a toy on the Sea.

Gripping Cail for balance as the Giantship resettled itself, Linden threw a glance downward and saw the colossal length of the Nicor still passing the keel. The creature was several times as long as Starfare's Gem.

The coracles lurched in the waves which recoiled from the sides of the dromond. But the four Giants kept their poise, held themselves ready. Galewrath had abandoned her riven drum. She stood now with the loop of the hawser in both hands; and her eyes watched the Sea.

Another shout. Some distance off to port, the Nicor broke water. For an instant, its head was visible, its snout like a prow, foam streaming from its gargantuan jaws. Then the creature arced back underwater and ploughed away in a long curve westward.

Starfare's Gem fell still. Linden could feel nothing except the pervasive ache of Covenant's need and the rapid beating of the Nicor's talk. She lost sight of the wave as it passed behind Foodfendhall toward the stern of the vessel. Every eye in the rigging followed the creature's path; but no one made a sound.

Her fingers dug into Cail's shoulder until she thought the joints would part. The thrumming of the creature became louder to her nerves than Covenant's plight.

“Ward!”

The suddenness of the cry stung Linden's hearing.

“It comes!”

Instantly, Giants scrambled out of the rigging. Honninscrave and the Anchormaster yelled orders. The crew gained the deck, braced themselves for a collision. Half a score of them slapped holding-blocks around the hawser near the cablewell.

The Storesmaster's strident shout rang over the vessel.

“How does it come?”

A Giant sprang into the prow, responded, “It comes truly!”

Linden had no time to do anything except cling to Cail. In that instant, the heel of the Giantship began to rise. Starfare's Gem tilted forward as the Nicor's head-wave struck the stern. The creature was passing along the ship's keel.

At the same moment, Galewrath dove into the Sea. Hauling the hawser behind her, she plunged to meet the Nicor.

Linden saw the Storesmaster kicking strongly downward. For one suspended heartbeat, Galewrath was alone in the water. Then the head of the Nicor flashed out from under the ship. The creature drove straight toward Galewrath.

As the two forms came together, a flurry of movement confused the sight. Linden clutched Cail's hard flesh, ground grip toward bone. The Nicor seemed to shout at her through the Sea and the stone. She heard its brute hunger, its incomprehension of what had called out to it. At her side, Pitchwife's hands wrestled the railing as if it were alive.

All at once, the hawser sprang outward. It leaped past the coracles, rushed hissing like fire into the water.

“Now!” cried the First.

Immediately, Galewrath's helpers abandoned their craft. As they did so, they overturned the coracles. With the openings downward and air trapped inside, the coracles floated like buoys, supporting between them the tackle and the iron ring through which the hawser sped.

Beneath the swimmers, the long dark body of the Nicor went writhing eastward. Lines were thrown down to them; but they did not respond. Their attention was focused on the place where Galewrath had disappeared.

When she broke water some distance past the coracles, a great shout went up from the Giantship. She waved her arms brusquely to signal that she was unharmed. Then she began to swim toward the dromond.

Short moments later, she and her companions stood dripping before the First. “It is done,” she panted, unable to conceal her pride. “I have looped the snout of the Nicor.”

The First returned an iron grin. But at once she swung toward the Giants poised on either side of the hawser near the cablewell. The cable was running headlong through the holding-blocks. “Our line is not endless,” she said firmly. “Let us begin.”

Ten Giants answered her with grins, nods, muttered promises. They planted their legs, braced their backs. At Honninscrave's command, they began to put pressure on the holding-blocks.

A scream of tortured cable shrilled across the deck. Smoke leaped from the blocks. The Giants were jerked forward a step, two steps, as they tried to halt the unreeling of the hawser.

The prow dipped under them like a nod; and Starfare's Gem started forward.

The screaming mounted. Honninscrave called for help. Ten more Giants slapped holding-blocks onto the hawser and threw their weight against it. Muscles knotted, thews stood out like bone, gasps burst along the line. Linden felt the strain in them and feared that not even Giants could bear such pressure. But by degrees the shrilling faded as the hawser slowed. The dromond gained speed. When the cable stopped, Starfare's Gem was knifing through the Sea as fast as the Nicor could tow it.

“Well done!” Honninscrave's eyes glinted under his massive brows. “Now let us regain what line we may, ere this Nicor conceives a desire to sound.”

Grunting with exertion, the Giants heaved on the hawser. Their feet seemed to clinch the granite of the deck, fusing ship and crew into a single taut organism. One arm's-length at a time, they drew in the cable. More of the crew came to their aid. The dromond began to gain on the Nicor.

Slowly, Linden uncramped her grip from Cail's shoulder. When she glanced at him, he appeared unconscious of her. Behind the flatness of his visage, he was watching the Giants with an acuity like joy, as if he almost shared her astonishment.

From the prow, crewmembers kept watch on the hawser. The buoys held the line's guide-ring above water; by observing the cable's movement in the ring, the Giants were able to see any change of direction made by the Nicor. This information they relayed to the steerswoman, so that she could keep Starfare's Gem on the creature's course.

But the buoys served another, more important purpose as well: they provided forewarning in case the Nicor should sound. If the creature dove suddenly and strongly enough, the prow of the Giantship might be pulled down before the hawser could be released. Perhaps some of the crew might be rent overboard when the others dropped the line. The buoys would give the Giants advance warning, so that they could let go of the cable together safely.

For a few moments, Linden was too full of amazement to think about anything else. But then a pang of recollection reminded her of Covenant.

Immediately, urgently, she sent her senses scrambling toward the afterdeck. At first, she could not feel her way past the immense straining of the Giants. They were a cynosure of effort, blocking her percipience. But then her grasp on the ambience of the dromond clarified, and she felt Covenant living as she had left him-locked rigid within his argent caul, rendered by his own act untouchable and doomed. An ache of dismay sucked at her when she thought that perhaps the ploy of the Giants had already failed. She protested, but could not seal herself against the fear. They did not deserve to fail.

The next moment, the Nicor thrashed through a violent change of direction. Starfare's Gem canted as if it had been stricken below the waterline. Swiftly, the steerswoman spun Shipsheartthew. The dromond began to straighten.

The Nicor wrenched itself the other way. Hooked by its prow, the Giantship pitched to that side. Water leaped toward the railing and Linden like a hammer blow.

The Sea curled away scant feet from her face. Then Honninscrave shouted, “Ease the line!”

The Giants obeyed; and the hawser leaped to a squeal through the holding-blocks, shot with a loud yammer past the prow. As the steerswoman fought the wheel, Starfare's Gem righted itself.

“Once more!” the Master ordered. “Hold!”

At his signal, blocks bit back into the cable, brought it squalling to a halt.

Linden found that she had forgotten to breathe. Her chest burned with the strain.

Before she could recover her balance, the dromond sagged back on its stern. Then the deck was nearly ripped from under her. The Nicor had surged to a stop, coiled its strength, and leaped forward again with redoubled ferocity.

In the instant that the pressure was released, all the Giants staggered backward. Some of them fell. Then the hawser tore at their arms as the Nicor began to run.

They were off-balance, could not hold, Honninscrave barked urgently, “Release!” They struggled to obey.

But they could not all unclose their holding-blocks at the same instant. One of them was late by a fraction of a heartbeat.

With the whole force of the Nicor, he was snatched forward. His grip appeared to be tangled on the hawser. Before he could let go, he crashed head and body against the rail of the prow.

The impact tore him free of the line. He tumbled backward, lay there crushed and still.

Shouts echoed unheard around Linden as Honninscrave mustered his crew to grip the hawser again. Her whole attention was fixed on the broken Giant. His pain cried out to her. Thrusting away from Cail, she jumped the hissing cable as if she were inured to peril, dashed to the sprawled form. All her instincts became lucid and precise.

She saw his shattered bones as if they were limned in light, felt his shredded tissues and internal bleeding as though the damage were incused on her own flesh. He was severely mangled. But he was still alive. His heart still limped; air still gurgled wetly from his pierced lungs. Perhaps he could be saved.

No. The harm was too great. He needed everything a modern hospital could have provided-transfusions, surgery, traction. She had nothing to offer except her health-sense.

Behind her, the ululation of the hawser fell silent as the Giants regained their hold. At once, they strove to win back the line they had lost. Starfare's Gem swept forward.

And yet his heart still beat. He still breathed. There was a chance. It was worth the attempt.

Without hesitation, she knelt at his side, cleared her mind of everything else. Reaching into him with her senses, she committed herself to the support of his faltering life.

With her own pulse, she steadied his, then bent her attention to the worst of his internal injuries. His pain flooded through her, but she refused to be mastered by it. His need outweighed pain, And it enabled her to trace his wounds as if they were laid bare before her. First she confronted his lungs. Broken ribs had punctured them in several places. Firmly, she nudged his tissues closed around the bones so that his lungs would not fill with blood. Then she followed the damage elsewhere. His bowels had been lacerated, but that was not the most immediate danger. Other organs were bleeding profusely. She poured herself toward them, fought to-

“Chosen.” Cail's voice cut through her concentration. “Brinn calls. The ur-Lord rouses himself.”

The words pierced her like cold death. Involuntarily, her awareness sprang in the direction of the afterdeck.

Cail was right. Covenant's sheath had begun to flash back and forth, flickering toward disaster. Within it, he twisted as though he were on the verge of the last rigor.

But the Giant — ! His life was seeping out of him. She could feel it flow as if it formed a palpable pool around her knees. Like the wound in her nightmare.

No!

As it flashed, Covenant's power gathered for one more blast. The import of that accumulation was written in the distress of his aura. He was preparing to release his white fire, let go

of it entirely. Then the last barrier between him and the venom would be gone. She knew without seeing him that his whole right side from hand to shoulder, waist to neck, was grotesquely swollen with poison.

One or the other, Covenant or the Giant.

While she sat there, stunned with indecision, they might both die.

No!

She could not endure it. Intolerable that either of them should be lost!

Her voice broke as she cried out, “Galewrath!” But she did not listen to the way her call cracked across the foredeck, did not wait for an answer. Cail tugged at her shoulder; she ignored him. Panting urgently, frenetically, Covenant! she plunged back into the stricken Giant.

The injuries which would kill him most quickly were there and there — two hurts bleeding too heavily to be survived. His lungs might go on working, but his heart could not continue. It had already begun to falter under the weight of so much blood-loss. With cold accuracy she saw what she would have to do. To keep him alive. Occupying his abdomen with her percipience, she twisted his nerves and muscles until the deeper of the two bleedings slowed to a trickle.

Then Heft Galewrath arrived, knelt opposite her. Covenant was going to die. His power gathered. Still Linden did not permit herself to flinch. Without shifting her attention, she grabbed Galewrath's hand, directed the thumb to press deeply into the Giant's stomach at a certain point. There. That pressure constricted the flow of the second fatal hurt.

“Chosen,” Cail's tone was as keen as a whip.

“Keep pressing there.” Linden sounded wild with hysteria, but she did not care. “Breathe into him. So he doesn't drown on blood.” She prayed that the experience of the seas had taught Galewrath something akin to artificial respiration.

In a frenzy of haste, she scrambled toward Covenant.

The foredeck appeared interminable. The Giants straining at the hawser dropped behind her one by one as if their knotted muscles and arched backs, the prices they were willing to pay in Covenant's name, measured out the tale of her belatedness. The sun shone into their faces. Beyond Foodfendhall, the flickering of Covenant's power grew slower as it approached its crisis.

Hergrom seemed to materialize in front of her, holding

open the door to the housing. She hurdled the storm-sill, pounded through the hall. Ceer flung open the far door.

With a wrench of nausea, she felt white fire collecting in Covenant's right side. Gathering against the venom. In his delirium, blind instinct guided him to direct the power inward, at himself, as if he could eradicate the poison by fire. As if such a blast would not also tear his life to shreds.

She had no time to try for any control over him. Springing out onto the afterdeck, she dove headlong toward him, skidded across the stone past Vain's feet to collide with Covenant so that any fire he unleashed would strike her as well. And as she hurled herself into danger, she drove her senses as far into him as she could reach.

Covenant! Don't!

She had never made such an attempt before, never tried to thrust a message through the link of her percipience. But now, impelled by desperation and hazard, she touched him. Far below his surface extremity, the struggling vestiges of his consciousness heard her. Barriers fell as he abandoned himself to her. A spring of fire broke open from his right hand, releasing the pressure. Flame gushed out of him and flowed away, harming nothing.

A wave of giddiness lifted her out of herself. She tottered to her feet, staggered against Cail. Her lips formed words she could hardly hear.

“Give him diamondraught. As much as you can.”

Dimly, she watched Brinn obey. She wanted to return to the foredeck. But her limbs were so full of palsy and relief that she could not move. Around her, the deck started to spin. She had to summon more strength than she knew she owned before she was able to tell Cail to take her back to Galewrath and the injured Giant.

At sunset, Starfare's Gem passed out of the zone of calm. Waves began to rock the vessel and wind kicked at the shrouds, drawing a cheer from the weary crew. By that time, they had recaptured half the line connecting them to the Nicor. Honninscrave spoke to the First. With a flourish, she drew her broadsword, severed the hawser at one stroke.

Other Giants climbed into the rigging and began to unfurl the sails. Soon Starfare's Gem was striding briskly before a stiff wind into the eastern night.

By that time, Linden had done everything she could for the wounded Giant. She felt certain he would live. When he regained consciousness enough to gaze up into her exhausted visage, he smiled.

Five: Fathers Child

DURING the night, squalls came up like a reaction against the earlier calm. They gusted and drove the dromond until it seemed to breast its way ponderously eastward like a worn-out grampus. But that impression was misleading. The masts were alive with lines and canvas and Giants, and Starfare's Gem raced through the cross-hacked waves like a riptide.

For four days, a succession of small storms battered the region, permitted the ship's crew little rest. But Linden hardly noticed the altercation of wind and rain and quiet. She grew unconsciously accustomed to the background song of the rigging, the rhythm of the prow in the Sea, to the pitching of the stone and the variable swaying of the lanterns and hammocks. At unexpected intervals, the Giants greeted her with spontaneous celebrations, honouring her for what she had done; and their warmth brought tears to her eyes. But her attention was elsewhere. The little strength she gained from troubled snatches of sleep and nibbled meals, she spent watching over Thomas Covenant.

She knew now that he would live. Though he had shown no hint of consciousness, the diamondraught was vivid in him-antivenin, febrifuge, and roborant in one. Within the first day, the swelling had receded from his right side and arm, leaving behind a deep mottled black-and-yellow bruise but no sign of any permanent damage. Yet he did not awaken. And she did not try to reach into him, either to gain information or to nudge him toward consciousness. She feared that perhaps the sickness still gnawed at his mind, exacting its toll from his bare sanity; but she was loath to ascertain the truth. If his mind were healing as well as his body, then she had no reason or excuse to violate his privacy. And if he were being corroded toward madness, she would need more strength than she now possessed to survive the ordeal.

The venom was still in him. Because of her, he had been driven right to the edge of self-extirpation. And even then she had risked him further for another's sake. But she had also called him back from that edge. Somehow through his delirium and looming death he had recognized her-and trusted her. That was enough. Whenever the continuing vulnerability of his sopor became more than she could bear, she went to tend the injured Giant.

His name was Mistweave, and his hardiness was vaguely astounding to her. Her own restless exhaustion, the inner clench of her tension, the burning of her red-rimmed eyes on the salt air, made him seem healthier than she was. By the second day of the squalls, his condition had stabilized to such an extent that she was able to attempt the setting of his fractured ribs. Guiding Galewrath and Seadreamer as they applied traction to Mistweave's torso, she bent those bones away from his lungs back into their proper alignment so that they could heal without crippling him. He bore the pain with a fierce grin and a flask of diamondraught; and when at last he lapsed into unconsciousness Linden could hear the new ease of his breathing.

The Storesmaster complimented the success of the manipulation with a blunt nod, as if she had expected nothing else from the Chosen. But Cable Seadreamer lifted her from her feet and gave her a tight hug that felt like envy. The flexing of his oaken muscles told her how severely the Master's brother ached for healing-for the Earth, and for his own misery. The scar under his eyes gleamed, pale and aggrieved.

In recognition and empathy, she returned his clasp. Then she left Saltroamrest, where Mistweave lay, and went back to Covenant.

Late at night after the third day of squalls, he began to rouse himself.

He was too weak to raise his head or speak. He seemed too weak to comprehend where he was, who she was, what had happened to him. But behind the dullness of his gaze he was free of fever. The venom had returned to latency.

Propping up his head, she fed him as much as he could eat of the food and drink which Cail had brought for her earlier. Immediately afterward, he slipped away into a more natural sleep.

For the first time in long days, Linden went to her own chamber. She had stayed away from it as if it were still full of nightmares; but now she knew that that darkness had receded, at least temporarily. Stretching out her exhaustion in the hammock, she let herself rest.

Throughout the next day, Covenant awakened at intervals without fully regaining consciousness. Each time he opened his eyes, tried to lift his head, she fed him; and each time he drifted almost at once back into his dreams. But she did not need her health-sense to see that he was growing stronger as his flesh drank in sleep and aliment. And that gave her a strange easement. She felt that she was linked to him symbiotically, that the doors of perception and vulnerability which she had opened to him could not be closed again. His recuperation comforted her in more ways than she could name.

This baffled her lifelong desire for independence, frustrated her severe determination to live at no behest but her own. If she had ever permitted herself to be thus accessible to someone else's needs and passions, how could she have survived the legacy of her parents? Yet she could not wish herself free of this paradoxically conflicted and certain man. The knots within her softened to see him healing.

Early the next morning, she fed him again. When he went back to sleep, she ascended to the afterdeck and found that the squalls had blown away. A steady wind carried Starfare's Gem lightly through the seas. Overhead, the sails curved like wings against the untrammelled azure of the sky.

Honninscrave hailed her like a shout of praise from the wheeldeck, then asked about Covenant. She replied briefly, almost dourly, not because the question troubled her, but because she did not know how to handle the unwonted susceptibility of her answer. Something within her wanted to laugh in pleasure at the breeze, and the clean sunshine, and the dancing of the waves. The dromond sang under her. And yet, unexpectedly, she felt that she was on the verge of tears. Her innominate contradictions confused her. She was no longer certain of who she was.

Scanning the afterdeck, she saw Pitchwife near the place where Covenant had lain in his cocoon. Vain still stood in the vicinity-he had not moved at all since Covenant's rescue-and Pitchwife ignored him. The deformed Giant bore a rude slab of rock over one shoulder. In the opposite hand, he carried a stone cauldron. Impelled partly by curiosity, partly by a rising pressure of words, Linden went to see what he was doing. He seemed to have a special empathy for confusion.

“Ah, Chosen,” he said in greeting as she approached; but his gaze was distracted, and concentration furrowed his brows. “You behold me about my craft.” In spite of his preoccupation, he gave her a smile. “Doubtless you have observed the workings of Starfare's Gem and seen that each Giant serves the needs of the ship. And doubtless also you have noted that the exception is myself. Pitchwife rides no rigging, bears no duty at Shipsheartthew. He labours not in the galley, neither does he tend either sail or line. What purpose then does he serve among this brave company?”

His tone hinted at humour; but most of his attention was elsewhere. Setting down his rock and cauldron, he examined first the wild magic scars in the deck, then the damage done to the roof of the housing. To reach the roof, he ascended a ladder which he must have positioned earlier for that purpose.

“Well,” he went on as he studied the harmed granite, “it is plain for all to see that I am inaptly formed for such labour. My frame ill fits the exertion of Shipsheartthew. I move without celerity, whether on deck or aloft. In the galley”-he laughed outright-“my stature poorly suits the height of stoves and tables. A Giant such as I am was not foreseen by the makers of Starfare's Gem. And as to the tending of sail and line-” With a nod of satisfaction at the condition of the roof, or at his thoughts, he returned to the cauldron. “That is not my craft.”

Reaching into the stone pot, he stirred the contents with one hand, then brought out a rank brown mass which looked like partially-hardened tar. “Chosen,” he said as he worked the mass with both hands, "I am condignly named Pitchwife. This is my 'pitch,' which few Giants and no others may grasp with impunity, for without Giant-flesh and Giant-craft any hand may be turned to stone. And the task for which I mould such pitch is 'wiving.'

“Witness!” he exclaimed as if his work made him gay. Climbing the ladder, he began to form his pitch like clay into the broken wall at the edge of the roof. Deftly, he shaped the pitch until it filled the breach, matching the lines of the wall exactly. Then he descended, returned to his slab of rock. His mighty fingers snapped a chip the size of his palm off the slab. His eyes gleamed. Chortling cheerfully, he went back to the roof.

With a flourish, as if to entertain a large audience, he embedded his chip in the pitch. At once, he snatched back his hand.

To Linden's amazement, the chip seemed to crystallize the pitch. Almost instantly, the mass was transformed to stone. In the space between two heartbeats, the pitch fused itself into the breach. The wall was restored to wholeness as if it had never been harmed. She could find no mark or flaw to distinguish the new stone from the old.

The expression on her face drew a spout of glee from Pitchwife. “Witness, and be instructed,” he laughed happily. “This bent and misbegotten form is an ill guide to the spirit within.” With precarious bravado, he thrust out his arms. “I am Pitchwife the Valorous!” he shouted. “Gaze upon me and suffer awe!”

His mirth was answered by the Giants nearby. They shared his delight, relished his comic posturing. But then the First's voice carried through the jests and ripostes. “Surely you are valorous,” she said; and for an instant Linden misread her tone. She appeared to be reprimanding Pitchwife's levity. But a quick glance corrected this impression. The First's eyes sparkled with an admixture of fond pleasure and dark memory. “And if you descend not from that perch,” she went on, “you will become Pitchwife the Fallen.”

Another shout of laughter rose from the crew. Feigning imbalance, Pitchwife tottered down the ladder; but his mien shone as if he could hardly refrain from dancing.

Shortly, the Giants returned to their tasks; the First moved away; and Pitchwife contented himself with continuing his work more soberly. He repaired the roof in small sections so that his pitch would not sag before he could set it; and when he finished, the roof was as whole as the wall. Then he turned his attention to the fire-scars along the deck. These he mended by filling them with pitch, smoothing them to match the deck, then setting each with a chip of stone. Though he worked swiftly, he seemed as precise as a surgeon., Sitting against the wall of the housing, Linden watched him. At first, his accomplishments fascinated her; but gradually her mood turned. The Giant was like Covenant-gifted with power; strangely capable of healing. And Covenant was the question to which she had found no answer.

In an almost perverse way, that question appeared to be the same one which so bedevilled her in another form. Why was she here? Why had Gibbon said to her, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth, and then afflicted her with such torment to convince her that he spoke the truth?

She felt that she had spent her life with that question and still could not reply to it.

“Ah, Chosen.” Pitchwife had finished his work. He stood facing her with arms akimbo and echoes of her uncertainty in his eyes. “Since first I beheld you in the dire mirk of the Sarangrave, I have witnessed no lightening of your spirit. From dark to dark it runs, and no dawn comes. Are you not content with the redemption of Covenant Giantfriend and Mistweave-a saving which none other could have performed?” He shook his head, frowning to himself. Then, abruptly, he moved forward, seated himself against the wall near her. “My people have an apothegm-as who does not in this wise and contemplative world?” He regarded her seriously, though the corners of his mouth quirked. “It is said among us, 'A sealed door admits no light.' Will you not speak to me? No hand may open that door but your own.”

She sighed. His offer touched her; but she was so full of things she did not know how to say that she could hardly choose among them. After a moment, she said, “Tell me there's a reason.”

“A reason?” he asked quietly.

“Sometimes-” She groped for a way to articulate her need. “He's why I'm here. Either I got dragged along behind him by accident. Or I'm supposed to do something to him. For him,” she added, remembering the old man on Haven Farm. “I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. But sometimes when I'm sitting down there watching him, the chance he might die terrifies me. He's got so many things I need. Without him, I don't have any reasons here. I never knew I would feel”-she passed a hand over her face, then dropped it, deliberately letting Pitchwife see as much of her as he could-"feel so maimed without him.

“But it's more than that.” Her throat closed at what she was thinking. I just don't want him to die! "I don't know how to help him. Not really. He's right about Lord Foul-and the danger to the Land. Somebody has got to do what he's doing. So the whole world won't turn into a playground for Ravers. I understand that. But what can I do about it? I don't know this world the way he does. I've never even seen the things that made him fall in love with the Land in the first place. I've never seen the Land healthy.

“I have tried,” she articulated against the old ache of futility, “to help. God preserve me, I've even tried to accept the things I can see when nobody else sees them and for all I know I'm just going crazy. But I don't know how to share his commitment. I don't have the power to do anything.” Power, yes. All her life, she had wanted power. But her desire for it had been born in darkness-and wedded there more intimately than any marriage of heart and will. “Except try to keep him alive and hope he doesn't get tired of dragging me around after him. I don't think I've ever done anything with my life except deny. I didn't become a doctor because I wanted people to live. I did it because I hate death.”

She might have gone on, then. There in the sunlight, with the stone warm under her, the breeze in her hair, Pitchwife's gentleness at her side, she might have risked her secrets. But when she paused, the Giant spoke into the silence.

“Chosen, I hear you. There is doubt in you, and fear, and also concern. But these things pass as well by another name, which you do not speak,”

He shifted his posture, straightened himself as much as the contortion of his back allowed. “I am a Giant. I desire to tell you a story.”

She did not answer. She was thinking that no one had ever spoken to her with the kind of empathy she heard from Pitchwife.

After a moment, he commenced by saying, “Perchance it has come to your ears that I am husband to the First of the Search, whom I name Gossamer Glowlimn.” Mutely, she nodded. "That is a tale worthy of telling.

“Chosen,” he began, "you must first understand that the Giants are a scant-seeded people. It is rare among us for any family to have as many as three children. Therefore our children are precious to us-aye, a very treasure to all the Giants, even such a one as myself, born sickly and malformed like an augury of Earth-Sight to come. But we are also a long-lived people. Our children are children yet when they have attained such age as yours. Therefore our families may hope for lives together in spans more easily measured by decades than years. Thus the bond between parent and child, generation after generation, is both close and enduring-as vital among us as any marriage.

“This you must grasp in order to comprehend that my Glowlimn has been twice bereaved.”

He placed his words carefully into the sunshine as if they were delicate and valuable. "The first loss was a sore one. The life of Spray Frothsurge her mother failed in childbed-which in itself is a thing of sad wonder, for though our people are scant-seeded we are hardy, and such a loss is rare. Therefore from the first my Glowlimn had not the love of her mother, which all cherish. Thus she clung with the greater strength-a strength which some have named urgency — to Brow Gnarlfist her father.

"Now Brow Gnarlfist was the Master of a roaming Giant-ship proudly named Wavedancer, and his salt yearning took him often from his child, who grew to be so lissome and sweet that any heart which beheld her ached. And also she was the memory of Frothsurge his wife. Therefore he bore young Glowlimn with him on all his sailings, and she grew into her girlhood with the deck lifting beneath her feet and the salt in her hair like gems.

“At that time”-Pitchwife cast Linden a brief glance, then returned his gaze to the depths of the sky and his story-"I served my craft upon Wavedancer. Thus Glowlimn became known to me until her face was the light in my eyes and her smile was the laughter in my throat. Yet of me she kenned little. Was she not a child? What meaning should a cripple of no great age have to her? She lived in the joy of her father, and the love of the ship, and knew me only as one Giant among many others more clearly akin to Gnarlfist her father. With that I was content. It was my lot. A woman-and more so a girl-looks upon a cripple with pity and kindness, perhaps, and with friendship, but not desire.

"Yet the time came — as mayhap it must come to all ships in the end-when Wavedancer ran by happenstance into the Soulbiter.

"I say happenstance, Linden Avery, for so I believe it was. The Soulbiter is a perilous and imprecise Sea, and no chart has ever told its tale surely. But Brow Gnarlfist took a harsher view. He faulted his navigation, and as the hazard into which we had blundered grew, so grew his self-wrath.

"For it was the season of gales in the Soulbiter, and the water was woven with crosswinds, buffeting Wavedancer in all ways at once. No sail could serve, and so the dromond was driven prow after keel southward, toward the place of reefs and peril known as Soulbiter's Teeth.

"Toward the Teeth we were compelled without help or hope. As we neared that region, Gnarlfist in desperation forced up canvas. But only three sails could be set-and only Dawngreeter held. The others fled in scraps from the spars. Yet Dawngreeter saved us, though Gnarlfist would not have credited it, for he was enmeshed in his doom and saw no outcome to all his choices but disaster.

“Torn from wind to wind among the gales, we stumbled into Soulbiter's Teeth.”

Pitchwife's narration carried Linden with him: she seemed to feel a storm rising behind the sunlight, gathering just out of sight like an unforeseen dismay.

"We were fortunate in our way. Fortunate that Dawngreeter held. And fortunate that we were not driven into the heart of the Teeth. In that place, with reefs ragged and fatal on all sides, Wavedancer would surely have been battered to rubble. But we struck upon the outermost reef-struck, and stuck, and heeled over to our doom with all the Soulbiter's wrath piling against us.

"At that moment, Dawngreeter caught a counterposing gale. Its force lifted us from the reef, hurling us away along a backlash of the current before the sail tore. In that way were we borne from the imminent peril of the Teeth.

"Yet the harm was done. We knew from the listing of the dromond that the reef had breached our hull. A craft of stone is not apt for buoyancy with such a wound. Pumps we had, but they made no headway.

“Gnarlfist cried his commands to me, but I scarce heard them, and so caught no hint of his intent. What need had I of commands at such a time? Wavedancer's stone had been breached, and the restoration of stone was my craft. Pausing only to gather pitch and setrock, I went below.”

His tone was focused and vivid now, implying rather than detailing the urgency of his story. "To the breach I went, but could not approach it. Though the wound was no larger than my chest, the force of the water surpassed me, thrust as it was by the dromond's weight and the Soulbiter's fury. I could not stand before the hole. Still less could I set my pitch. Already the sea within Wavedancer had risen to my waist. I did not relish such a death belowdecks, on the verge of Soulbiter's Teeth, with nothing gained for my life at all.

"But as I strove beyond reason or hope to confront the breach, I learned the import of Gnarlfist's commands. To my uttermost astonishment, the gush of water was halted. And in its place, I beheld the chest of Brow Gnarlfist covering the hole. Driven by the extremity of his self-wrath or his courage, he had leaped into the water, fought his way to the breach. With his own flesh, he granted me opportunity for my work.

“That opportunity I took. With terrible haste, I wrought pitch and setrock into place, thinking in desperation and folly to heal the wound ere Gnarlfist's breath gave way. Were I only swift enough, he might regain air in time.”

The knotting of his voice drew Linden's gaze toward him. Deep within himself, he relived his story. His fists were clenched. “Fool!” he spat at himself.

But a moment later he took a long breath, leaned back against the wall of the housing. “Yet though I was a fool, I did what required to be done, for the sake of the dromond and all my companions. With pitch and setrock, I sealed the breach. And in so doing I sealed Gnarlfist to the side of Wavedancer. My pitch took his chest in a grip of stone and held him.”

Pitchwife sighed. “Giants dove for him. But they could not wrest him from the granite. He died in their hands. And when at last Wavedancer won free to clear weather, allowing our divers to work at less hazard, the fish of the deep had taken all of him but the bound bones.”

With an effort, he turned to Linden, let her see the distress lingering in his gaze. “I will not conceal from you that I felt great blame at the death of Brow Gnarlfist. You surpass me, for you saved Mistweave and yet did not lose the Giantfriend. For a time which endured beyond the end of that voyage, I could not bear to meet the loss in Glowlimn's countenance.” But gradually his expression lightened. "And yet a strange fruit grew from the seed of her father's end, and of my hand in that loss. After her bereavement, I gained a place in her eyes-for had not her father and I saved a great many Giants whom she loved? She saw me, not as I beheld myself-not as a cripple to be blamed-but rather as the man who had given her father's death meaning. And in her eyes I learned to put aside my blame.

“In losing her father, she had also lost his salt yearning. Therefore she turned from the Sea. But there was yearning in her still, born of the heart-deep reaving she had suffered. When the spirit is not altogether slain, great loss teaches men and women to desire greatly, both for themselves and for others. And her spirit was not slain, though surely it was darkened and tempered, so that she stands among our people as iron stands among stone.” He was watching Linden intently now, as if he were unsure of her ability to hear what he was saying. “Her yearning she turned to the work of the Swordmainnir.” His tone was serious, but did not disguise the smile in his eyes. “And to me.”

Linden found that she could not meet his complex attention. Perhaps in truth she did not hear him, did not grasp the reasons why he had told her this story. But what she did hear struck her deeply. Gnarlfist's suicide contrasted painfully with her own experience. And it shed a hard light on the differences between her and the First-two daughters who had inherited death in such divergent ways.

In addition, Pitchwife's willingness to look honestly and openly at his past put the subterfuge of Linden's own history to shame. Like him, she had memories of desperation and folly. But he relived his and came out of them whole, with more grace than she could conceive. Hers still had so much power—

He was waiting for her to speak. But she could not. It was too much. All the things she needed drew her to her feet, sent her moving almost involuntarily toward Covenant's cabin.

She had no clear idea of what she meant to do. But Covenant had saved Joan from Lord Foul. He had saved Linden herself from Marid. From Sivit na-Mhoram-wist. From Gibbon-Raver. From Sunbane-fever and the lurker of the Sarangrave. And yet he seemed helpless to save himself. She needed some explanation from him. An account which might make sense of her distress.

And perhaps a chance to account for herself. Her failures had nearly killed him. She needed him to understand her.

Woodenly, she descended to the first underdeck, moved toward Covenant's cabin. But before she reached it, the door opened, and Brinn came out. He nodded to her flatly. The side of his neck showed the healing vestiges of the burn he had received from Covenant. When he said, “The ur-Lord desires speech with you,” he spoke as if his native rectitude and her twisted uncertainty were entirely alien to each other.

So that he would not see her father, she went straight into the cabin. But there she stopped, abashed by the bared nerves of her need. Covenant lay high in his hammock; his weakness was written in the pallor of his forehead, in his limp recumbency. But she could see at a glance that the tone of his skin had improved. His pulse and respiration were stable. Sunlight from the open port reflected lucidly out of his orbs. He was recuperating well. In a day or two, he would be ready to get out of bed.

The gray in his tousled hair seemed more pronounced, made him appear older. But the wild growth of his beard could not conceal the chiselled lines of his mouth or the tension in his gaunt cheeks.

For a moment, they stared at each other. Then the flush of her dismay impelled her to look away. She wanted to move to the hammock-take his pulse, examine his arm and shin, estimate his temperature-touch him as a physician if she could not reach out to him in any other way. Yet her abashment held her still.

Abruptly, he said, “I've been talking to Brinn.” His voice was husky with frailty; but it conveyed a complex range of anger, desire, and doubt. “The Haruchai aren't very good at telling stories. But I got everything I could out of him.”

At once, she felt herself grow rigid as if to withstand an attack. “Did he tell you that I almost let you die?”

She read his reply in the pinched lines around his eyes. She wanted to stop there, but the pressure rising in her was too strong. What had Brinn taught him to think of her? She did not know how to save herself from what was coming. Severely, she went on, “Did he tell you that I might have been able to help you when you were first bitten? Before the venom really took over? But I didn't?”

He tried to interrupt; she overrode him. “Did he tell you that the only reason I changed my mind was because the First was going to cut off your arm? Did he tell you”-her voice gathered harshness-“that I tried to possess you? And that was what forced you to defend yourself so we couldn't reach you? And that was why they had to call the Nicor!” Unexpected rage rasped in her throat. “If I hadn't done that, Mistweave wouldn't have been hurt at all. Did he tell you that?”

Covenant's face was twisted into a grimace of ire or empathy. When she jerked to a stop, he had to swallow roughly before he could say, “Of course he told me. He didn't approve. The Haruchai don't have much sympathy for ordinary human emotions like fear and doubt. He thinks everything else should be sacrificed for me.” For a moment, his eyes shifted away as if he were in pain. “Banner used to make me want to scream. He was so absolute about everything.” But then he looked back at her. “I'm glad you helped Mistweave. I don't want more people dying for me.”

At that, her anger turned against him. His reply was so close to what she wanted; but his constant assumption of responsibility and blame for everything around him infuriated her. He seemed to deny her the simple right to judge her own acts. The Haruchai at least she could understand.

But she had not come here to shout at him. In a sense, it was his sheer importance to her that made her angry. She wanted to assail him because he meant so much to her. And that frightened her.

But Covenant seemed scarcely aware that she had not left the cabin. His gaze was fixed on the stone above him, and he was wrestling with his own conception of what had happened to him. When he spoke, his voice ached with trouble.

“It's getting worse.”

His arms were hugged over his chest as if to protect the scar of his old knife-wound.

“Foul is doing everything he can to teach me power. That's what this venom is all about. The physical consequences are secondary. The main thing is spiritual. Every time I become delirious, that venom eats away my restraint. The part of me that resists being so dangerous. That's why-why everything. Why that Raver got us into trouble in Mithil Stonedown. Why we've been attacked over and over again. Why Gibbon risked showing me the truth in that soothtell. Part of the truth.”

Abruptly, he shifted in the hammock, raised his right hand. “Look.” When he clenched his fist, white fire burst from his knuckles. He brought it to a brightness that almost dazzled Linden, then let it drop. Panting, he relaxed in the hammock.

“I don't need a reason anymore.” He was trembling. "I can do that more easily than getting out of bed. I'm a timebomb.

He's making me more dangerous than he is. When I explode-“ His visage contorted in dismay. ”I'll probably kill everybody who has any chance of fighting him. I almost did it this time. Next time-or the time after that-"

His exigency was vivid in him; but still he did not look at her. He seemed to fear that if he looked at her the peril would reach out to doom her as well. "It's happening to me. The same thing that ruined Kevin. Broke the Bloodguard Vow. Butchered the Unhomed. I'm becoming what I hate. If I keep going like this, I'll kill you all. But I can't stop it. Don't you understand? I don't have your eyes. I can't see what I need to fight the venom. Something physical-my wrists-or my chest-that's different. My nerves are still alive enough for that. But I don't have the health-sense.

“That's probably the real point of the Sunbane. To cripple the Earthpower so I won't be healed, won't become able to see what you see. Everyone here has already lost it. You have it because you come from outside. You weren't shaped by the Sunbane. And I would have it. If I weren't-”

He snatched back what he had been about to say. But his tension poured from him like anguish, and he could not refrain from turning his distress toward her. His gaze was stark, blood-ridden, haunted; his eyes were wounds of understanding. And the depth of his self-dread caught at her throat, so that she could not have spoken, even if she had known how to comfort him.

“That's why I've got to get to the One Tree. Got to. Before I become too deadly to go on living. A Staff of Law is my only hope.” Fatality stalked through his tone. He had his own nightmares-dreams as heinous and immedicable as hers. “If we don't do it in time, this venom will take over everything, and there won't be any of us left to even care what happens to the Land, much less fight.”

She gaped at him, at the implications of what he was saying. In the past, he had always spoken of needing a Staff for the Land-or for her, to return her to her own life. She had not grasped the true extent of his personal exigency. Behind all his other commitments, he was wrestling for a way to save himself. That was why the movement of the ship when the Giants snared the Nicor had been able to reach him. It had restored his most fundamental hope: the One Tree. Restitution for the harm he had wrought when he had destroyed the old Staff. And escape from the logic of his venom. No wonder he looked so ravaged. She did not know how he endured it.

But he must have misunderstood her silence. He returned his gaze to the ceiling. When he spoke again, his voice was flat with bitterness.

“That's why you're here.”

She winced as if he had struck her. But he did not see her.

“That old man-the one you met on Haven Farm. You said you saved his life.” That was true. And he had spoken to her. But she had never told Covenant all the old man had said. "He chose you for your eyes. And because you're a doctor. You're the only one in this whole mess who can even grasp what's happening to me, never mind do anything about it.

“And Foul-” he continued dismally. “If Gibbon was telling the truth. Not just trying to scare you. Foul chose you because he thinks he can make you fail. He thinks you can be intimidated. That's why Gibbon touched you. Why Marid jumped at you first. To set you up for failure. So that you won't help me. Or won't do the right thing when you try. He knows how vulnerable I am. How long I've needed-”

Without warning, his voice sharpened in pure protest. "Because you're not afraid of me! If you were afraid, you wouldn't be here. None of this would've happened to you. It would all be different.

“Hell and blood, Linden!” Suddenly, he was shouting with all the scant strength of his convalescence. “You're the only woman in the world who doesn't look at me like I'm some kind of reified crime! Damn it, I've paid blood to try to spare you everything I can. I killed twenty-one people to rescue you from Revelstone! But I can't reach you. What in hell do you-”

His passion broke her out of her silence. She interrupted him as if she were furious at him; but her ire was running in a different direction.

“I don't want to be spared. I want reasons. You tell me why I'm here, and it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have anything to do with me. So I'm a doctor from outside the Land. So what? So is Berenford, but this didn't happen to him. I need a better reason than that. Why me?”

For an instant, he glared reflections of sunlight at her. But her words seemed to penetrate him by degrees, forcing him backward muscle by muscle until he was lying limp in the hammock again. He appeared exhausted. She feared that he would not be able to find the strength to tell her to get out of his cabin. But then he surprised her as he had so often surprised her in the past. After all this time, she still could not estimate the workings of his mind,

“Of course you're right,” he murmured, half musing to himself. "Nobody can ever spare anybody else. I've got so much power-I keep forgetting it isn't good for what I want. It's never enough. Just a more complicated form of helplessness. I should know better. I've been on this kind of journey before.

“I can't tell you why you.” He appeared too weary or defeated to raise his head. "I know something about the needs that drive people into situations like this. But I don't know your needs. I don't know you. You were chosen for this because of who you are, but from the beginning you haven't told me a thing. My life depends on you, and I don't really have any idea what it is I'm depending on.

“Linden.” He appealed to her without looking at her, as if he feared that his gaze would send her away. “Please. Stop defending yourself. You don't have to fight me. You could make me understand.” Deliberately, he closed his eyes against the risk he was taking. “If you chose to.”

Again she wanted to refuse him. The habit of flight ran deep in her. But this was why she had come to him. Her need was too clear to be denied.

Yet the question was so intimate that she could not approach it directly. Perhaps if she had not heard Pitchwife's tale she would not have been able to approach it at all. But his example had galvanized her to this hazard. He had the courage to relive his own past. And his story itself, the story of the First's father-

“Sometimes,” she said, though she was hardly ready to begin, “I have these black moods.” There was a chair near her; but she remained standing rigidly. “I've had them ever since I was a girl. Since my father died. When I was eight. They feel like-I don't know how to describe them. Like I'm drowning and there's nothing I can do to save myself. Like I could scream forever and nobody would hear me.” Powerless. "Like the only thing I can do to help myself is just die and get it over with., ,

"That's what I started feeling after we left Coercri. It piled up the way it always does, and I never know why it comes when it does or why it goes away again. But this time was different. It felt the same to me-but it was different. Or maybe what you said is true-when we were on Kevin's Watch. That here the things inside us are externalized, so we meet them as if they were somebody else. What I was feeling was that Raver.

“So maybe there is a reason why I'm here.” She could not stop now, though an invidious trembling cramped her chest. “Maybe there's a connection between who I am and what Foul wants.” She almost gagged on the memory of Gibbon's touch; but she knotted her throat to keep the nausea down. "Maybe that's why I freeze. Why I get so scared. I've spent my whole life trying to prove it isn't true. But it goes too deep.

“My father-” There she nearly faltered. She had never exposed this much of herself to anyone. But now for the first time her craving to be healed outweighed her old revulsion. “He was about your age when he died. He even looked a bit like you.” And like the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm. “Without the beard. But he wasn't like you. He was pathetic.”

The sudden vitriol of her ejaculation stopped her momentarily. This was what she had always wanted to believe-so that she could reject it. But it was not even true. Despite his abject life, her father had been potent enough to warp her being. In his hammock, Covenant seemed to be resisting a temptation to watch her; but he spared her the self-consciousness of his gaze.

Impacted emotion hardened her tone as she went on, "We lived a mile outside a dead little town like the one where you live. In one of those tottering square frame houses. It hadn't been painted since my parents moved in, and it was starting to slump.

"My father raised goats. God knows where he even got the money to buy goats so he could raise them. Every job he had was worse than the last one. His idea of being proud and independent was selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. When that failed, he tried encyclopaedias, Then water-purifiers. Water-purifiers! Everybody in thirty miles had their own well, and the water was already good. And every time a new career failed he just seemed to get shorter. Collapsing in on himself.

He thought he was being a rugged individualist. Make his own way. Bow to no man. Good Christ! He probably went down on his knees to get the money to start raising those goats.

"He had ideas about milk and cheese. Breeding stock. Meat. So of course he had no more conception of how to raise goats than I did. He just put them on leashes and let them graze around the house. Soon we were living in dust for a hundred yards in all directions.

"My mother's reaction was to eat everything she could get her hands on, to go to church three times a week, and punish me whenever I got my clothes dirty.

"By the time I was eight, the goats had finished off our property and started on land that belonged to somebody else. Naturally my father didn't see anything wrong with that. But the owner did. The day my father was supposed to appear in court to defend himself-I found this out later-he still hadn't told my mother we were in trouble. So she took the car to go to church, and he didn't have any way to get to the county seat-unless he walked, which didn't really make sense because it was twenty miles away.

“It was summer, so I wasn't in school. I was out playing, and as usual I got my clothes dirty, and then I got nervous. My mother wasn't due home for hours yet, but at that age I didn't have much sense of time. I wanted to be someplace where I could feel safe, so I went up to the attic. On the way, I played a game I'd been playing for a long time, which was to get up the stairs without making them squeak. That was part of what made the attic feel safe. No one could hear me go up there.”

The scene was as vivid to her as if it had been etched in acid. But she watched it like a spectator, with the severity she had spent so many years nurturing. She did not want to be that little girl, to feel those emotions. Her orbs were hot marbles in their sockets. Her voice had grown clipped and precise, like a dissecting instrument. Even the strain rising through her knotted back did not make her move. She stood as still as she could, instinctively denying herself.

“When I opened the door, my father was there. He was sitting in a half-broken rocker, and there was red stuff on the floor around him, I didn't even understand that it was blood until I saw it coming from the gashes in his wrists. The smell made me want to puke.”

Covenant's gaze was fixed on her now, his eyes wide with dismay; but she disregarded him. Her attention was focused on her efforts to survive what she was saying.

"He looked at me. For a minute, he didn't seem to know who I was. Or maybe he hadn't figured out that I mattered. But then he hauled himself out of the chair and started to swear at me. I couldn't understand him. But I worked it out later. He was afraid I was going to stop him. Go to the phone. Get help somehow. Even though I was only eight. So he slammed the door, locked me in with him. Then he threw the key out the window.

"Until then, I hadn't even realised there was a key. It must've been in the lock all the time, but I'd never noticed it. If I had, I would've locked myself in any number of times, just so I could feel safer.

“Anyway, I was there watching him die. What was happening took a while to filter through to me. But when I finally understood, I got frantic.” Frantic, indeed. That was a mild word for her distress. Behind Linden's rigid self-command huddled a little girl whose heart had been torn in shreds. "I did a lot of screaming and crying, but that didn't help. My mother was still at church, and we didn't have any neighbours close enough to hear me. And it just made my father madder. He was doing it out of spite to begin with. My crying made him worse. If there was ever a chance he might change his mind, I lost it. Maybe that was really what got him so mad. At one point, he mustered enough strength to stand up again so he could hit me. Got blood all over me.

“So then I tried pleading with him. Be his little girl. Beg him not to leave me. I told him he should let me die instead of him. I even meant it. Eight-year-olds have a lot of imagination. But that didn't work either. After all, I was just another burden dragging him down. If he hadn't had a wife and daughter to worry about, he wouldn't have failed all those times.” Her sarcasm was as harsh as a rasp. For years, she had striven to deny that her emotions had such force. “But his eyes were glazing. I was just desperate. I tried being angry at him. Worked myself into a fit telling him I wouldn't love him anymore if he died. Somehow that reached him. The last thing I heard him say was, 'You never loved me anyway.' ”

And then the blow had fallen, the stroke which had nailed her forever to her horror. There was no language in the world to describe it. From out of the cracked floorboards and the untended walls had come pouring a flood of darkness. It was not there: she was still able to see everything. But it rose into her mind as if it had been invoked by her father's self-pity-as if while he sprawled there dying he had transcended himself, had raised himself by sheer abjection to the stature of power, and had summoned the black malice of nightmares to attend upon his passing. She was foundering in the viscid midnight of his condemnation, and no rescue could reach her.

And while she sank, his face had changed before her eyes. His mouth had stretched into what should have been a cry; but it was not-it was laughter. The triumphant glee of spite, soundless and entire. His mouth had held her gaze, transfixed her. It was the dire cavern and plunge from which the darkness issued, hosting forth to appal her. You never loved me anyway. Never loved me. Never loved. A darkness indistinguishable now from the vicious malevolence of Gibbon-Raver's touch. Perhaps it had all taken place in her mind-a product of her young, vulnerable despair. That made no difference. It had taught her her powerlessness, and she would never be free of it.

Unwillingly, she saw Covenant's face, grown aghast for her. She did not want that from him. It weakened her defences. Her mouth was full of the iron taste of rage. She could no longer keep her voice from shivering. But she was unable to stop.

"A long time after that, he died. And a long time after that, my mother came home. By then, I was too far gone to know anything. Hours passed before she missed us enough to find out the attic was locked. Then she had to call the neighbours to help her get the door open. I was conscious the whole time-I remember every minute of it-but there was nothing I could do. I just lay there on the floor until they broke down the door and took me to the hospital.

“I was there for two weeks. It was the only time I can remember ever feeling safe.”

Then abruptly the quivering of her joints became so strong that she could no longer stand. Covenant's open stare was a mute cry of empathy. She fumbled to the chair, sat down. Her hands would not stop flinching. She gripped them between her knees as she concluded her story.

"My mother blamed me for the whole thing. She had to sell the goats and the house to the man who was suing my father so she could pay the funeral costs and hospital bills. When she was having one of her pathos orgies, she even accused me of killing her dear husband. But most of the time she just blamed me for causing the whole situation. She had to go on welfare — God knows she couldn't get a job, that might interfere with church — and we had to live in a grubby little apartment in town. Somehow it was my fault. Compared to her, an eight-year-old in shock was an effective adult,"

The long gall of her life might have continued to pour from her, releasing some of her pent outrage; but Covenant stopped her. In a voice congested with pain and care, he said, “And you've never forgiven her. You've never forgiven either of them.”

His words stung her. Was that all he had garnered from her difficult story-from the fact that she had chosen to tell it? At once, she was on her feet beside the hammock, raging up at him, “You're goddamn right I never forgave them! They raised me to be another bloody suicide!” To be a servant of the Despiser. “I've spent my whole life trying to prove they were wrong!”

The muscles around his eyes pinched; his gaze bled at her. But he did not waver. The chiselled lines of his mouth, the gauntness of his cheeks, reminded her that he was familiar with the attractions of suicide. And he was a father who had been bereft of his son and wife for no other fault than an illness he could not have prevented. Yet he lived. He fought for life. Time and again, she had seen him turn his back on actions and attitudes that were dictated by hate. And he did not compromise with her, in spite of all that she had told him.

“Is that why you think people shouldn't tell each other their secrets? Why you didn't want me to tell you about Lena? Because you're afraid I'll say something you don't want to hear?”

Then she wanted to howl at him like a maddened child; but she could not. Once again, she was foiled by her health-sense. She could not blind herself to the quality of his regard. No man had ever looked at her in that way before.

Shaken, she retreated to the chair, sagged against its stone support.

“Linden,” he began as gently as his worn hoarseness allowed. But she cut him off,

“No.” She felt suddenly defeated. He was never going to understand. Or he understood too well. "That's not why. I haven't forgiven them, and I don't care who knows it. It's kept me alive when I didn't have anything else. I just don't trust these confessions.“ Her mouth twisted. ”Knowing about Lena doesn't mean anything to me. You were different then. You paid for what you did. She doesn't change anything for me. But she does for you. Every time you accuse yourself of rape, you make it true. You bring it into the present. You make yourself guilty all over again.

“The same thing happens to me. When I talk about my parents. Even though I was only eight then and I've spent twenty-two years trying to make myself into somebody else.”

In response, Covenant gripped the edge of the hammock, pulled his weakness that much closer to her. Aiming himself at her like a quarrel, he replied, “You've got it backward. You're doing it to yourself. Punishing yourself for something you didn't have the power to change. You can't forgive yourself, so you refuse to forgive anybody else.”

Her eyes leaped to his; protest and recognition tangled each other so that she could not retort.

“Aren't you doing the same thing Kevin did? Blaming yourself because you aren't equal to every burden in the world? Killing your father in your mind because you can't bear the pain of being helpless? Destroying what you love because you can't save it?”

“No.” Yes. I don't know. His words pierced her too deeply. Even though he had no health-sense, he was still able to reach into her, wrench her heart. The roots of the screaming she had done for her father seemed to grow all through her; and Covenant made them writhe. “I don't love him. I can't. If I did, I wouldn't be able to keep on living.”

She wanted to flee then, go in search of some way to protect her loneliness. But she did not. She had already done too much fleeing. Glaring up at him because she had no answer to his complex empathy, she took a flask of diamondraught from the table, handed it to him, and required him to drink until he had consumed enough to make him sleep.

After that, she covered her face with her hands and huddled into herself. Slumber softened the rigor of his face, increasing his resemblance to her father. He was right; she could not forgive herself. But she had failed to tell him why. The darkness was still in her, and she had not confessed what she had done with it.

Six: The Questsimoon

SHE did not want to sleep. Afterimages of her father glared across the back of her thoughts from time to time, as if she had looked at that story too closely and had burned the nerves of her sight. She had not exorcised the memory. Rather, she had stripped away the defensive repression which had swaddled it. Now her own eight-year-old cries were more vivid to her than they had been for years. She tried to fend off sleep because she feared the hunger of her nightmares.

But what she had done in speaking to Covenant also gave her a curious half-relief, a partial release of tension. It was not enough, but it was something-an act for which she had never before been able to find the courage. That steadied her. Perhaps restitution was more possible than she had believed. At last, she returned to her cabin, rolled over the edge into her hammock. Then the motion of Starfare's Gem lifted her out of herself along the waves until she was immersed in the width and depth of the Sea.

The next day, she felt stronger. She went to check on Covenant with some trepidation, wondering what he would make of the things which had passed between them. But he greeted her, spoke to her, accepted her ministrations in a way clearly intended to show that his challenges and demands had not been meant as recrimination. In a strange way, his demeanour suggested that he felt a kind of kinship toward her, a leper's attraction toward the wounded and belorn. This surprised her, but she was glad of it. When she left him, her forehead was lightened by the lifting of an unconscious frown.

The following morning, he came out on deck. Blinking against the unaccustomed sunlight, he stepped through the port seadoor under the wheeldeck, moved toward her. His gait was tentative, weakened by incomplete recuperation; his skin was pallid with frailty. But she could see that he was mending well.

The unexpected fact that his beard was gone startled her. His bare cheeks and neck seemed to gleam vulnerably in the light.

His gaze was uncertain, abashed. She had become so used to his beard that he seemed almost young without it. But she did not understand his evident embarrassment until he said m a conflicted tone, “I burned it off. With my ring.”

“Good.” Her own intensity took her aback. But she approved of his dangerous power. “I never liked it.”

Awkwardly, he touched his cheek, trying with numb fingers to estimate the exposure of his skin. Then he grimaced ruefully. “Neither did I.” He glanced downward as if to begin a VSE, then returned his attention to her face. “But I'm worried about it. What scares me is being able to do something like this so easily.” The muscles of his face bunched in reference to the strictures which had formerly limited the wild magic, permitting it to arise only in desperation and contact with other, triggering powers. “I did it because I'm trying to teach myself control. The venom-I'm so tangled up. I've got to learn to handle it.”

While he spoke, his eyes slid away to the open Sea. It lay choppy and cerulean to the horizons, as complex as himself. “But it isn't good enough. I can make that fire do anything I want-if I hold it down to a trickle. But I can feel the rest of it inside me, ready to boil. It's like being crazy and sane at the same time. I can't seem to have one without the other.”

Studying his troubled tension, Linden remembered the way he had said, That's why I've got to get to the One Tree. Before I become too deadly to go on living. He was tormented by the same peril that made him irrefusable to her. For an instant, she wanted to put her arms around him, hug him in answer to the ache of her desire.

She refrained because she was too conscious of her own inadequate honesty. She had told him enough to make him think that she had told him everything. But she had not told him about her mother. About the brutal and irreducible fact which kept her from becoming the person she wanted to be. Worthy of him.

Since the day after the squalls had ended, Grimmand Honninscrave had been wrestling Starfare's Gem through a confusion of winds, tacking incessantly to find a way eastward across the ragged seas. The Giants laboured cheerfully, as though their pleasure in their skill and the vessel outweighed almost any amount of fatigue. And Ceer and Hergrom gave regular assistance in the shrouds, compensating with swift strength for their lesser bulk and reach. But still the dromond's progress was relatively slow. Day by day, that fact deepened the First's frown. It darkened the knurled frustration which lay like a shadow behind the surface of Seadreamer's mien. And as Covenant's health slowly returned, his own inner knots squirmed tighter. Goaded by his fear of venom and failure, by the numberless people who were dying to feed the Sunbane, he began to pace the decks as if he were trying to will the Giantship forward.

But after three more days of tortuous movement, tack after tack through the intricate maze of the winds, the air shifted into a steady blow out of the southwest. Honninscrave greeted the change with a loud holla. Giants swarmed to adjust the canvas. Starfare's Gem heeled slightly to port, dipped its prow like an eager animal freed of its leash, and began surging swiftly into the east. Spray leaped from its sides like an utterance of the moire-marked granite-stone shaped and patterned to exult in the speed of the Sea. In a short time, the Giantship was racing gleefully across the waves.

To the Storesmaster, who was standing near him, Covenant said, “How long will this keep up?”

Galewrath folded her arms over her heavy breasts, fixed her gaze on the sails. “In this region of the Earth,” she returned, “such freakish winds as we have fled are rare. This blow we name the Questsimoon. The Roveheartswind. We will sight Bareisle ere it falters.” Though her tone was stolid, her eyes glistened at the white thrust of the canvas and the humming of the sheets.

And she was right. The wind held, rising so steadfastly out of the southwest that at night Honninscrave felt no need to shorten sail. Though the full of the moon had passed some nights ago, and the stars gave scant light by which to manage the dromond, he answered the implicit needs of the Search by maintaining his vessel in its tireless run. The wind in the rigging and the canted roll of the deck, the constant slap and susurrus of water like an exhalation along the sides, made Starfare's Gem thrill under Linden's feet. Constantly now she felt the dromond breathing through the swells, a witchery of stone and skill-as vibrant as the timbre of life. And the straight thrust of the Questsimoon accorded the crew a rest from their earlier exertions.

Their pace gave the First a look of stern satisfaction, eased Honninscrave's work until at times he responded to Pitchwife's jests and clowning like a playful behemoth. Grins took even Sevinhand Anchormaster's old sorrow by surprise, and the healing of his arm gave him a clear pleasure.

But no speed or Giantish gaiety etiolated Covenant's mounting tension. He appeared to enjoy the good humour around him, the spray from the dromond's prow, the firm vitality of the wind. At times, he looked like a man who had spent years yearning for the company of Giants. But such pleasures no longer sustained him. He was in a hurry. Time and again, he carried his anxiety across the listing deck toward wherever Linden happened to be standing and awkwardly engaged her in conversation, as if he did not want to face his thoughts alone. Yet he seldom spoke of the memories and needs which lay uppermost in his mind, so near the surface that they were almost legible through the bones of his forehead. Instead, he picked up more distant threads, questions, doubts and worried at them, trying to weave himself into readiness for his future.

During one of their colloquies, he said abruptly, “Maybe I did sell myself for Joan.” He had spoken about such things before. “Freedom doesn't mean you get to choose what happens to you. But you do get to choose how you react to it. And that's what the whole struggle against Foul hinges on. In order to be effective against him — or for him — we have to make our own decisions. That's why he doesn't just possess us. Take the ring by force. He has to take the risk we might choose against him. And so does the Creator. That's the paradox of the Arch of Time. And white gold. Power depends on choice. The necessity of freedom. If Foul just conquers us, if we're under his control, the ring won't give him the power to break out. But if the Creator tries to control us through the Arch, he'll break it.” He was not looking at her; his eyes searched the rumpled waves like a VSE. “Maybe when I took Joan's place I gave up my freedom.”

Linden had no answer for him and did not like to see him in such doubt. But she was secretly pleased that he was healthy enough to wrestle with his questions. And she needed his reassurance that she might be able to make choices that mattered.

At another time, he turned her attention to Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood on the afterdeck near Foodfendhall exactly as he had since the moment when Covenant had fallen there. His black arms hung slightly crooked at his sides as if they had been arrested in the act of taking on life; and the midnight of his eyes gazed emptily before him like an assertion that everything which took place on the Giantship was evanescent and nugatory.

“Why — ?” Covenant mused slowly. “Why do you suppose he wasn't hurt by that bloody Grim? It just rolled off him. But the Riders were able to burn him with their rukhs. He actually obeyed them when they forced him into the hold.”

Linden shrugged. Vain was an. enigma. The way he had reacted toward her-first bowing to her outside Revelstone, then carrying her away from her companions when she was helpless with Sunbane-fever- disturbed her. “Maybe the Grim wasn't directed at him personally,” she offered. “Maybe the” — she groped for the name-“the ur-viles? Maybe they could make him immune to anything that happened around him-like the Sunbane, or the Grim — But not to something aimed at him.” Covenant listened intently, so she went on guessing. “Maybe they didn't want to give him the power to actually defend himself. If he could do that, would you trust him?”

“I don't trust him anyway,” muttered Covenant. “He was going to let Stonemight Woodhelven kill me. Not to mention those Sunbane-victims around During Stonedown. And he butchered-” His hands fisted as he remembered the blood Vain had shed.

“Then maybe,” she said with a dull twist of apprehension, “Gibbon knows more about him than you do.”

But the only time his questions drew a wince from her was when he raised the subject of Kevin's Watch. Why, he asked, had Lord Foul not spoken to her when they had first appeared in the Land? The Despiser had given him a vitriolic message of doom for himself and the Land. She still remembered that pronouncement exactly as Covenant had relayed it to her: There is despair laid up for you here beyond anything your petty mortal heart can bear. But Lord Foul had said nothing to her. On Kevin's Watch, he had let her pass untouched.

“He didn't need to,” she replied bitterly. “He already knew everything he needed about me.” Gibbon-Raver had revealed the precision of the Despiser's knowledge.

He regarded her with a troubled aspect; and she saw that he had already considered that possibility. “Maybe not,” he returned in denial. "Maybe he didn't talk to you because he hadn't planned for you to be there. Maybe when you tried to rescue me you took him by surprise and just got swept along. If that's true, then you weren't part of his original plan. And everything Gibbon said to you is a He. A way to defuse the danger you represent. Make you think you don't have a chance. When the truth is that you're the biggest threat to him there is."

“How?” she demanded. His interpretation did not comfort her. She would never be able to forget the implications of Gibbon's touch. “I don't have any power.”

He grimaced crookedly. “You've got the health-sense. Maybe you can keep me alive.”

Alive, she rasped to herself. She had expressed the same idea to Pitchwife, and it had not eased her. But how else could she hope to alter the course of her life? She had an acute memory of the venom in Covenant, the accumulating extremity of his need. Perhaps by dedicating herself to that one task-a responsibility fit for a doctor-she would be able to appease her hunger and hold the darkness back.

The Roveheartswind blew as steadily as stone for five days. Since the sails required so little care, the crew busied itself with the manifold other tasks of the ship: cleaning away every hint of encrusted salt; replacing worn ratlines and gear; oiling unused cable and canvas to preserve them against the weather. These smaller chores the Giants performed with the same abiding enthusiasm that they gave to the more strenuous work of the dromond. Yet Honninscrave watched them and the ship, scanned the Sea, consulted his astrolabe, studied his parchment charts as if he expected danger at any moment. Or, Linden thought when she looked at him closely, as if he needed to keep himself busy.

She rarely saw him leave the wheeldeck, though surely neither Sevinhand nor Galewrath would have warded Starfare's Gem less vigilantly than he did. At times when his gaze passed, unseeing, through her, she read a clinch of hope or dread in his cavernous orbs. It left her with the impression that he was caught up in an idea which had not yet occurred to anyone else.

For five days, the Roveheartswind blew; and as the fifth day relaxed into late afternoon, a shout from Horizonscan snatched every eye on deck toward the east: “Bareisle!” And there off the port bow stood the black burned rock of the island.

From a distance, it appeared to be no more than a dark eyot amid the sun-burnished blue of the Sea. But as the wind swept Starfare's Gem forward on the south, Bareisle's true size became manifest. With its towering igneous peaks and sheer valleys, its barren stone scarcely fringed by the stubborn clutch of vegetation, the island looked like a tremendous cairn or marker, erected toward the sky in warning. Birds cycled above it as if it were a dead thing. As she studied the craggy rock, Linden felt a quiver of foreboding.

At the same time, Honninscrave lifted his voice over the Giantship. “Hear me!” he cried-a shout of yearning and trepidation, as lorn and resonant as the wind. “Here we pass from the safe Sea into the demesne and ken of the Elohim. Be warned! They are lovely and perilous, and none can foretell them. If they so desire, the very Sea will rise against us.” Then he barked his commands, turning Starfare's Gem so that it passed around Bareisle with its stern braced on the wind, running now straight into the northeast.

Linden's foreboding tightened. The Elohim, she murmured. What kind of people marked the verge of their territory with so much black stone? As her view of the island changed from south to east, Bareisle came between her and the sunset and was silhouetted in red glory. Then the rock appeared to take on life, so that it looked like the stark straining fist of a drowner, upraised against the fatal Sea. But as the sun slipped past the horizon, Bareisle was lost in dusk.

That night, the Questsimoon faded into a succession of crosswinds which kept each watch in turn almost constantly aloft, fighting the sails from tack to tack. But the next day the breezes clarified, allowing Starfare's Gem to make steady progress. And the following dawn, when Linden hurried from her cabin to learn why the dromond was riding at rest, she found that the Giants had dropped anchor off a jutting coast of mountains.

The ship stood with its prow aimed squarely toward a channel which lay like a fiord between rugged peaks. Bifurcated only by the inlet, these mountains spread away to the north and south as far as Linden could see, forming an impassable coast. In the distance on both sides, the littoral curved as if it were receding from the Sea. As a result, the cliffs directly facing the dromond appeared to be out-thrust like jaws to grab whatever approached their gullet.

The dawn was crisp; behind the salt breeze and the sunlight glittering along the channel, the air tasted like late fall. But the mountains looked too cold for autumn. Their dour cols and tors were cloaked with evergreens which seemed to take a gray hue from the granite around them, as if this land passed without transition and almost without change from summer into winter. Yet only the highest peaks cast any hints of snow.

The Giants had begun to gather near the wheeldeck. Linden went to join them. Honninscrave's words, Lovely and perilous, were still with her. And she had heard other hints of strangeness concerning the Elohim.

Covenant and Brinn, Pitchwife and the First had preceded her, and Seadreamer followed her up to the wheeldeck almost on Cail's heels. On the afterdeck, Sevinhand and the Storesmaster stood with the other Giants and Haruchai, all waiting to hear what would be said. Only Vain seemed oblivious to the imminence in the air. He remained motionless near Foodfendhall, with his back to the coast as if it meant nothing to him.

Linden expected the First to speak, but it was Honninscrave who addressed the gathering. “My friends,” he said with a wide gesture, "behold the land of the Elohim. Before us lies our path. This inlet is named the Raw. It arises from the River Callowwail, and the River Callowwail in turn arises from the place which the Elohim name their clachan — from the spring and fountainhead of Elemesnedene itself. These mountains are the Rawedge Rim, warding Elemesnedene from intrusion. Thus are the Elohim preserved in their peace, for no way lies inward except the way of the Raw. And from the Raw no being or vessel returns without the goodwill of those who hold the Raw and the Callowwail and Woodenwold in their mastery.

“I have spoken of the Elohim. They are gay and subtle, warm and cunning. If they are at all limited in lore or power, that limit is unknown. None who have emerged from the Raw have gained such knowledge. And of those who have not emerged, no tale remains. They have passed out of life, leaving no trace.”

Honninscrave paused. Into the silence, Covenant protested, “That's not the way Foamfollower talked about them.” His tone was sharp with memory. “He called them 'the sylvan faery Elohim. A laughing people.' Before the Unhomed got to Seareach, a hundred of them decided to stay and live with the Elohim. How perilous can they be? Or have they changed too-?” His voice trailed off into uncertainty.

The Master faced Covenant squarely. "The Elohim are what they are. They do not alter. And Saltheart Foamfollower bespoke them truly.

"Those of our people whom you have named the Unhomed were known to us as the Lost. In their proud ships they ventured the Earth and did not return. In the generations which followed, search was made for them. The Lost we did not find, but signs of their sojourn were found. Among the Bhrathair still lived a handful of our people, descendants of those few Giants who remained to give aid against the Sandgorgons of the Great Desert. And among the Elohim were found tales of those fivescore Lost who chose to take their rest in Elemesnedene.

"But Saltheart Foamfollower spoke as one descended from those who emerged from the Raw, permitted by the goodwill of the Elohim. What of the fivescore who remained? Covenant Giantfriend, they were more surely Lost than any of the Unhomed, for they were Lost to themselves. Twice a hundred years later, naught remained of them but their tale in the mouths of the Elohim. In such a span, fivescore Giants would not have died of age-yet these were gone. And behind them they left no children. None, though our people love children and the making of children as dearly as life.

“No.” The Master straightened his shoulders, confronted the channel of the Raw. "I have said that the Elohim are perilous, I have not said that they desire hurt to any life, or to the Earth. But in their own tales they are portrayed as the bastion of the last truth, and that truth they preserve in ways which baffle all who behold them. On Starfare's Gem, I alone have once entered the Raw and emerged. As a youth on another dromond, I came to this place with my companions. We returned scatheless, having won no boon from the Elohim by all our gifts and bargaining but the benison of their goodwill. I speak from knowledge.

“I do not anticipate harm. In the name of the white ring-of the Earth-Sight”- he glanced intently at Seadreamer, betraying a glimpse of the pressure which had been driving him-"and of our need for the One Tree-I trust we will be well received. But such surpassing power is ever perilous. And this power is both squandered and withheld for purposes which the Elohim do not deign to reveal. They are occult beyond the grasp of any mortal.

"From time to time, their power is given in gift. Such is the gift of tongues, won for our people in a time many and many generations past, yet still unwaning and untainted. And such a gift we now seek. But the Elohim grant no gifts unpurchased. Even their goodwill must be won in barter-and in this bartering we are blind, for the quality which gives a thing or a tale value in their sight is concealed. For precious stone and metal they have no need. Of knowledge they have no dearth. Many tales hold scant interest for them. Yet it was with a tale that the gift of tongues was won-the tale, much loved by Giants, of Bahgoon the Unbearable and Thelma Twofist who tamed him. And the goodwill of the Elohim for me and my companions was won by the teaching of a simple knot-a thing so common among us that we scarcely thought to offer it, yet it was deemed of worth to the Elohim.

“Therefore we emerged from Elemesnedene in wonder and bafflement. And in conviction of peril, for a people of power who find such delight in a knot for which they have no use are surely perilous. If we give them offense, the Raw will never yield up our bones.”

As he spoke, tension mounted in Linden. Some of it grew from Covenant; his aggravated aura was palpable to her. Perplexity and fear emphasized the gauntness of his eyes, compressed the strictness which lined his face. He had based his urgent hope on what Foamfollower had told him about the Elohim. Now he was asking himself how he could possibly barter with them for the knowledge he needed. What did he have that they might want?

But beyond the pressure she read in him, she had conceived a tightness of her own. She had thought of a gift herself, a restitution for which she wanted to ask. If the Elohim could give the entire race of Giants the gift of tongues, they could answer other needs as well.

Like Covenant-and Honninscrave-she did not know what to offer in exchange.

Then the First said, “It is enough.” Though she made no move to touch her sword, or the round shield at her back, or the battle-helm attached to her belt, she conveyed the impression that she was girding herself for combat. Her corselet, leggings, and greaves gleamed like readiness in the early light.

“We are forewarned. Do you counsel that Starfare's Gem be left at anchor here? Surely a longboat will bear us up this Raw if need be.”

Her question forced the Master to examine himself. When he replied, his voice was wary. “It boots nothing for the Search if Starfare's Gem is saved while you and Covenant Giantfriend and the Earth-Sight are lost.” And I do not wish to be left behind, his eyes added.

The First nodded decisively. Her gaze was fixed on the Rawedge Rim; and Linden suddenly realised that the Swordmain was incognisant of the yearning in Honninscrave. “Let us sail.”

For a moment, the Master appeared to hesitate. Conflicting emotions held him: the risk to his ship was tangled up in his other needs. But then he threw back his head as if he were baring his face to a wind of excitement; and commands like laughter sprang from his throat.

At once, the crew responded. The anchors were raised; the loosened sails were sheeted tight. As the wheel came to life, the prow dipped like a nod. Starfare's Gem began to gather headway toward the open mouth of the Raw.

Assigning Shipsheartthew to the Anchormaster, Honninscrave went forward so that he could keep watch over the dromond's safety from the foredeck. Impelled by his own tension, Covenant followed. Brinn, Hergrom, and Ceer joined him, accompanied by all the Giants who were not at work.

Instead of going after them, Linden turned to the First. Her health-sense was a special form of sight, and she felt responsible for what she saw. The Swordmain stood gazing into the Raw as if she were testing the iron of her decision against those cliffs. Without preamble, Linden said, “Honninscrave has something he wants to ask the Elohim.”

The statement took a moment to penetrate the First. But then her eyes shifted toward Linden. Sternly, she asked, “Have you knowledge of it?”

Linden shrugged with a tinge of asperity. She could not descry the content of Honninscrave's thoughts without violating his personal integrity. “I can see it in him. But I don't know what it is. I thought maybe you would.”

The First shook her head as she strove to assess the importance of Linden's words. “It is not my place to question the privacy of his heart.” Then she added, "Yet I thank you for this word. Whatever his desire, he must not barter himself to purchase it."

Linden nodded and left the matter to the First. Hurrying down to the afterdeck, she went forward.

As she reached the foredeck, she saw the Rawedge Rim vaulting into the sky on either side. Starfare's Gem rode swiftly before the wind, though it carried no more than half its sails; and the cliffs seemed to surge closer as if they were reaching out to engulf the dromond. Finding herself a place near the prow, she scanned the Raw as far ahead as she could see, looking for some hint of rocks or shoals; but the water appeared deep and clear until it disappeared beyond a bend. Since its rising, the sun had angled to the south over the range, leaving the channel in shadow. As a result, the water looked as gray and hard as the winterbourne of the mountains. The surface mirrored the granite cliffs rather than the high cerulean sky. It gave her the impression that Starfare's Gem was sailing into an abyss.

Steadily, the dromond slipped ahead. Honninscrave called for the sails to be shortened more. Still the vessel glided with a strange celerity, as if it were being inhaled by the Raw. Now Starfare's Gem was committed. With this wind behind it, it would never be able to turn and retreat. The Giantship went riding into shadow until only the highest sails and Horizonscan held the light. Then they, too, were extinguished, and the dromond seemed to go down into darkness.

As Linden's eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw the gray walls more clearly. The granite looked wounded and unforgiving, as if it had been unnaturally reft to provide this channel and were now waiting in rigid impatience for any upheaval which would allow it to close back over the water, sealing its dire heart from further intrusion. Studying them with her percipience, she knew that these mountains were angry. Affronted. Only the ancient slowness of their life prevented their umbrage from taking palpable form.

And still the dromond moved with eerie quickness. The cliffs gathered the wind at the Giantship's back, and as the Raw narrowed the force of the blow grew. Honninscrave responded by steadily loosening and shortening the canvas. Yet when Linden looked back toward the open Sea, she saw the maw of the channel shrink into the distance. Soon it disappeared altogether as Starfare's Gem passed a bend in the Raw.

But in spite of the bends and narrowing of the channel, Honninscrave and Sevinhand were able to keep their vessel in the centre, where the water was deepest.

Apart from the giving of commands-shouts which resounded off the walls and chased in the wake of the dromond like bitter warnings, helpless wrath-the Giants were hushed. Even Pitchwife's native volubility was rapt in the concentration of the ship. Linden's legs and back grew stiff with tension. The cliffs had risen a thousand feet above her head, and as the channel narrowed they loomed over the Giantship as if they were listening for the one sound which would release them from their ancient paresis, bring them crashing down in fury and vindication.

A league passed as if Starfare's Gem were being drawn inward involuntarily by the dark water. The only light came from the sun's reflection on the northern peaks. For a few moments, the wet, gray silence acquired an undertone as Covenant muttered abstract curses to himself, venting his trepidation. But soon he lapsed as if he were humbled by the way the granite listened to him. The walls continued to crowd ponderously together.

In another league, the channel had become so strait that Starfare's Gem could not have turned to retreat even if the wind had changed. Linden felt that she was having trouble breathing in the gloom. It raised echoes of the other darkness, hints of crisis. The omen of Bareisle came back to her, Powerless, she was being borne with or without volition into a place of power.

Then, unexpectedly, the dromond navigated another bend; and the Raw opened into a wide lagoon like a natural harbour among the mountains. Beyond the lagoon, the Rawedge Rim tried to close, but did not, leaving a wedge of low ground between the cliffs. From the mouth of this valley came a brisk river which fed the lagoon: the Callowwail. Its banks were thickly grown with trees. And on the trees beyond the mouth of the valley, the sun shone.

Yet the lagoon itself was strangely still, All ardour was absorbed into the black depths of the mountain-roots, imposing mansuetude on the confluence of the waters.

And the air, too, seemed peaceful now. Linden found herself breathing the pellucid and crackling scents of autumn as if her lungs were eager for the odd way in which the atmosphere here tasted telic, deliberate-wrested from the dour

Rim and the Raw by powers she could not begin to comprehend.

At a shout from Honninscrave, Sevinhand spun the wheel, turning Starfare's Gem so that its prow faced the channel again, ready for retreat if the wind shifted. Then all the anchors were lowered. Promptly, several Giants moved to detach one of the longboats from its mooring below the rail of the wheeldeck. Like the dromond, the longboat was formed of stone, moire-marked and lithe. After readying its oars, the Giants set the craft into the water.

With a cumulative sigh like a release of shared suspense, the rest of the crew began to move as if they had awakened into a trance. The irenic air seemed to amaze and relieve them. Linden felt vaguely spellbound as she followed Covenant aft. Tasting the atmosphere, she knew that the woods beyond the mouth of the valley were rife with colour. After the passage of the Raw, she wanted to see those trees.

The First scented the air keenly. Pitchwife was on the verge of laughing aloud, Seadreamer's visage had cleared as if the cloud of Earth-Sight had been temporarily blown from his soul. Even Covenant appeared to have forgotten peril: his eyes burned like fanned coals of hope. Only the Haruchai betrayed no reaction to the ambience. They bore themselves as if they could not be touched. Or as if they saw the effect of the air on their companions-and did not trust it.

Honninscrave faced the valley with his hands knotted. “Have I not said it?” he breathed softly. “Lovely and perilous.” Then, with an effort, he turned to the First. “Let us not delay. It ill becomes us to relate our purpose in this place.”

“Speak of yourself, Master,” Pitchwife replied like a gleam. “I am very well become to stand and savour such air as this.”

The First nodded as if she were agreeing with her husband. But then she addressed Honninscrave. “It is as you have said. We four, with Covenant Giantfriend, the Chosen, and their Haruchai, will go in search of these Elohim. Caution Sevinhand Anchormaster to give no offense to any being who may chance upon him here.”

The Master bowed in acknowledgment, started toward the wheeldeck. But the First stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“You also I will caution,” she said quietly. “We must be wary of what we attempt to buy and sell with these folk. I will have no offers made, or gifts asked, without my consent.”

At once, Honninscrave’s mien hardened. Linden thought that he would refuse to understand. But he chose a different denial. “This life is mine. I will barter with it as I desire.”

Covenant looked at the Giants with guesses leaping in his gaze. In a tone of studied nonchalance, he said, “Hile Troy felt the same way. So far, it's cost him more than three thousand years.”

“No.” The First ignored Covenant, met Honninscrave squarely. “It is not yours. You are the Master of Starfare's Gem, sworn and dedicate to the Search. I will not lose you.”

Rebellions tautened Honninscrave's forehead, emphasizing the way his brows buttressed his eyes. But after a moment he acceded, “I hear you.” His voice was roughed by conflict. Turning, he went to give his commands to Sevinhand.

The First studied his back as he departed. When he was gone, she spoke to Linden. “Observe him well, Chosen. Inform me of what you see. I must not lose him.”

Not lose him, Linden echoed. Her answering nod had no meaning. If Honninscrave was in danger, then so was she.

While the Master conferred with Sevinhand, a rope-ladder was secured above the longboat. As soon as Honninscrave was ready, Ceer and Hergrom swarmed down to the craft to hold the ladder for the rest of the company. Seadreamer joined them, seated himself at the first set of oars. The First's blunt nod sent Pitchwife after Seadreamer. Then she turned to Covenant and Linden, waiting for them.

Linden felt a sharp emanation of abashment from Covenant. “I'm no good at ladders,” he muttered awkwardly. The fumbling of his hands indicated both their numbness and his old vertigo. But then he shrugged. “So what? Brinn can always catch me.” With his shoulders clenched, he moved to the railing.

Brinn went protectively ahead of the Unbeliever. Bracing his arms on either side of Covenant, he kept the ur-Lord as safe as a hammock. Vaguely, Linden wondered if there were any danger the Haruchai could not match. That they judged her for her weaknesses should have been no surprise.

When her turn came, she followed Cail downward. Pitchwife steadied her as she dropped into the bottom of the slightly rocking boat. Carefully, she seated herself opposite Covenant.

The next moment, a shout of surprise and warning echoed off the dromond. Vain came lightly over the side, descending the ladder as easily as a born sailor. Yet as soon as he was aboard the longboat he lapsed back into immobility.

The First and Honninscrave followed at once, anticipating trouble. But Vain did not react to them. She looked at Covenant: he answered with a shrug of disavowal. She frowned as if she wanted to heave Vain overboard; but instead she sat down dourly in the stern of the longboat.

Honninscrave took the other set of oars. Stroking together, the two brothers sent the craft skimming toward the shore near the mouth of the Callowwail.

As they rode, Linden tried to do something to ease or distract Covenant's knotted rigidity. Because she could think of nothing new to say about Vain, she commented instead, “You've talked about Hile Troy before. The Forestal of Andelain. But you never told me what happened to him.”

Covenant seemed unable to take his eyes away from the Rim. “I wasn't there.” Or perhaps he did not want to acknowledge the point of her question. "The story is that he and Mhoram tried to bargain with Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep. Troy's army was caught between one of Foul's Giant-Ravers and Garroting Deep. In those days, the Forestal killed anyone who had the gall to set foot in his forest. Troy wanted to save his army by luring the Giant-Raver into the Deep. He and Mhoram were trying to bargain for a safe-conduct.

“Caerroil Wildwood said there was a price for his help. Troy didn't ask any questions. He just said he'd pay it.”

With a grimace, Covenant looked at Linden. He was glaring, but his ire was not directed toward her. “The price was Troy's life. He was transformed into some sort of apprentice Forestal. Ever since, he's been living the life Caerroil Wildwood chose for him.” Covenant's hot stare reminded her that he was a man who had already paid extravagant prices. He meant to pay them again, if he had to.

Shortly, the longboat ground into the shingle which edged the lagoon. Ceer and Hergrom sprang out to hold the craft as the others disembarked. While Honninscrave and Seadreamer secured the longboat, Linden climbed to the first fringe of the grass which led away into the trees. The air felt stronger here-a crisp and tranquil exudation from the valley ahead. Her nose thrilled to the piquant scents of fall. A backward glance showed her the Giantship. It appeared small against the dark uprise of the Rawedge Rim. With its sails furled, its masts and spars stark in the half-light, it looked like a toy on the still surface of the lagoon.

Covenant stood near her. His stiff frown could not conceal the moiling within him; venom; power; people dying in the Land; doubt. They were a volatile mixture, crowding close to deflagration. She wondered if he were truly prepared to sell himself to gain access to the One Tree. Yes, she could see that he was. But if the Elohim were not to be trusted-?

Honninscrave interrupted her thoughts. With Pitchwife, the First, and Seadreamer, he came up the shingle in long Giantish strides. Then he gestured toward the trees. “Yonder lies Woodenwold,” he said in a tight voice. “Our way is there, along the Callowwail. I adjure you to touch nothing. Harm nothing! In this place, appearances deceive. Mayhap Woodenwold is another thorp of the Elohim, like unto Elemesnedene itself.”

Covenant scowled in that direction. "How much farther? When are we going to meet these Elohim?'

The Master's reply was sharp. “We will not meet them. Perchance they will elect to meet us. If we give them no offense.”

Covenant met Honninscrave's hard gaze. After a moment, the Unbeliever nodded, swallowing the bile of his thoughts.

No one stirred. The air seemed to hold them back, urging them to accept this gentleness and be content. But then Ceer and Hergrom started forward; and the stasis of the company was broken. The First and Honninscrave went after the two Haruchai, followed by Linden and Covenant, Cail and Brinn, Seadreamer and Pitchwife. And behind them came Vain, walking as if he were blind and deaf. In this formation, they approached the River Callowwail and the marge of Woodenwold.

As they neared the trees, Hergrom and Ceer found a natural way along the riverbank. Soon the quest was among the woods, moving toward sunlight. Woodenwold was dense with oak and sycamore, ash and maple punctuated by willow, old cottonwood, and young mimosa. In the shadow of the Rim, they shared the mood of the dour stone: their browns and greens were underscored by gray and ire. But when the sun touched them, they sprang instantly into vibrant autumn blazonry. Crossing the shadowline, the companions passed from gray into glory. Woodenwold was an ignition of colour-flaming red and orange, sparkling yellow, russet and warm brown. And leaves danced about their feet as they walked, wreathing their legs in gay anadems so that they seemed to trail fire and loveliness at every step. Among them, Linden walked as if each stride carried her farther from her mortality.

The distance passed without effort as the mountains retreated on either hand to make room for the valley. The River Callowwail chuckled like the glee of leaves beside the company. It was not a wide river, but its depths were full of life and sun-spangles. Its waters shone like a new birth. The light of midday gleamed, clinquant and refulgent, on every tree bough and swath of grass.

Around her, Linden thought she heard the sound of bells. They rang delicately in the distance, enhancing the woods with music. But none of her companions appeared to notice the chiming; and she could not stop to question it. It felt like the language of the trees, tanging and changing until it formed words she almost understood, though the meaning slipped away into music whenever she tried to grasp it. The bells were as lovely as the leaves; and yet in a vague way they disquieted her. She was troubled by an intuitive sense that she needed to comprehend them.

Ahead of her, Woodenwold was thinning, opening, The trees spread north and south around the foothills of the Rim; but along the Callowwail, Woodenwold faded into a sun-yellow lea which filled the whole bottom of the valley. Between the company and the mountains, purple with distance, which closed the east lay one wide bowl of golden grass, marked only by the line of the Callowwail as it curved slowly northeastward toward its source.

Honninscrave halted among the last trees. Indicating the lea, he said, “This the Elohim name the maidan of Elemesnedene. At its centre lies the clachan itself, the spring and fountain of the Callowwail. But that clachan we will never find without the guidance of the Elohim. If they do not choose to meet us, we will wander the maidan as it were a maze, and there we will leave our bones to nourish the grass.”

The First studied him narrowly. “What then is your counsel?”

“This,” he said, “that we remain here, awaiting the goodwill of these folk. This is their land, and we are in their hands. Here, at least, if we are not welcomed we may return unmazed to Starfare's Gem and cast about us for some other hope.”

The First made some reply; but Linden did not hear her. The sound of bells became abruptly louder, filling her ears. Again, the chiming reminded her of language. Do you-? she asked her companions. Do you hear bells? For the space of several heartbeats, she was unaware that she had not spoken aloud. The music seemed to enter her mind without touching her ears.

Then the company was no longer alone. With an eldritch concatenation like the slow magic of dreams, the belling swirled around the trunk of a nearby ash; and a figure flowed out of the wood. It did not detach itself from the tree, was not hidden against the bark: from within the ash, it stepped forward as if it were modulating into a new form. Features emerged as the figure shaped itself: eyes like chrysoprase, delicate brows, a fine nose and soft mouth. Wattle-slim and straight, deft and proud, with a grave smile on her lips and a luminous welcome in her gaze, the woman came forward like an incarnation of the soul of the ash in which she had been contained; and her departure left no mark of presence or absence in the wood. A cymar draped her limbs like the finest sendaline.

Linden stared. Her companions started in surprise. The Haruchai were poised on the balls of their feet. Covenant's mouth opened and closed involuntarily.

But Honninscrave faced the approaching woman and bowed as if she were worthy of worship.

She stopped before them. Her smile radiated power of such depth and purity that Linden could hardly bear to look at it. The woman was a being who transcended any health-sense. Softly, she said, “I am pleased that you so desire our goodwill.” Her voice also was music; but it did not explicate the ringing in Linden's mind. “I am Daphin.” Then she nodded to Honninscrave's bow. “You are Giants. We have known Giants.”

Still the bells confused Linden, so that she was not sure of what she was hearing.

Daphin turned to Brinn. “You we do not know. Perhaps the tale of your people will interest us.”

The chiming grew louder. Daphin was gazing directly at Linden. Linden had no control over the sound in her head. But she almost gasped hi shock when Daphin said, “You are the Sun-Sage.”

Before Linden could react or respond, the woman had turned to Covenant. He was staring at her as if his astonishment were a wound. At once, her smile fell. The bells clamoured like surprise or fear. Distinctly, she said, “You are not.” As the questers gaped at her, she suddenly melted down into the grass and was gone, leaving no trace of her passage on the wide lea.

Seven: Elemesnedene

LINDEN clamped her hands over her ears, and the chiming faded-not because of her hands, but because the gesture helped her focus her efforts to block or at least filter the sound. She was sweating in the humid sunlight. The Sun-Sage? Hints of panic flushed across her face. The Sun-Sage?

Covenant swore repeatedly under his breath. His tone was as white as clenched knuckles. When she looked at him, she saw him glaring at the grass where Daphin had vanished as if he meant to blight it with fire.

The Haruchai had not moved. Honninscrave's head had jerked back in astonishment or pain. Seadreamer gazed intently at Linden in search of understanding. Pitchwife stood beside the First as if he were leaning on her. Her eyes knifed warily back and forth between Linden and Covenant.

Vain's black mien wore an aspect of suppressed excitement.

“Sun-Sage?” the First asked rigidly. “What is this 'Sun-Sage?' ”

Linden took a step toward Covenant. He appeared to be cursing at her. She could not bear it. “I'm not:' Her voice sounded naked in the sunshine, devoid of any music which would have given it beauty. ”You know I'm not."

His visage flamed at her. “Damnation! Of course you are. Haven't you learned anything yet?”

His tone made her flinch. Daphin's You are not formed a knot of ire in him that Linden could see as clearly as if it had been outlined on his forehead. He would not be able to alter the Sunbane. And because of him, the Elohim had withdrawn her welcome.

With hard patience, the First demanded again, “What is this 'Sun-Sage'?”

Covenant replied like a snarl, “Somebody who can control the Sunbane.” His features were acute with self-disgust.

“They will not welcome us.” Loss stretched Honninscrave's voice thin. “Oh, Elohim!”

Linden struggled for a way to answer Covenant without berating him. I don't have the power. Sweat ran into her eyes, blurring her vision. The tension of the company felt unnatural to her. This anger and grief seemed to violate the wide mansuetude of Woodenwold and the maidan. But then her senses reached farther, and she thought, No. That's not it. In some way, the valley's tranquillity appeared to be the cause of this intensity. The air was like a balm which was too potent to give anything except pain.

But the opening of her percipience exposed her to the bells again. Or they were drawing closer. Chiming took over her mind. Pitchwife's voice was artificially muffled in her ears as he said, “Mayhap their welcome is not yet forfeit. Behold!”

She blinked her sight clear in time to see two figures come flowing up out of the ground in front of her. Smoothly, they transformed themselves from grass and soil into human shapes.

One was Daphin. Her smile was gone; in its place was a sober calm that resembled regret. But her companion wore a grin like a smirk.

He was a man with eyes as blue as jacinths, the same colour as his mantle. Like Daphin's cymar, his robe was not a garment he had donned, but rather an adornment he had created within himself. With self-conscious elegance, he adjusted the folds of the cloth. The gleam in his eyes might have been pleasure of mockery. The distinction was confused by the obligate of the bells.

“I am Chant,” he said lightly. “I have come for truth.”

Both he and Daphin gazed directly at Linden.

The pressure of their regard seemed to expose every fiber of her nature. By contrast, her health-sense was humble and crude. They surpassed all her conceptions.

She reacted in instinctive denial. With a wrench of determination, she thrust the ringing into the background. The

Elohim searched her as Gibbon had once searched her. Are you not evil? No. Not as long as the darkness had no power. “I'm not the Sun-Sage.”

Chant cocked an eyebrow in disbelief.

“If anybody is, it's him.” She pointed at Covenant, trying to turn the eyes of the Elohim away. “He has the ring.”

They did not waver. Daphin's mien remained pellucid; but Chant's smile hinted at fierceness. “We have no taste for untruth”-his tone was satin-“and your words are manifestly untrue. Deny not that you are what you are. It does not please us. Explain, rather, why this man holds possession of your white ring.”

At once, Covenant snapped, “It's not her ring. It's mine. It's always been mine.” Beside the Elohim, he sounded petulant and diminished.

Chant's smile deepened, gripping Linden in its peril. “That also is untrue. You are not the Sun-Sage.”

Covenant tensed for a retort. But Daphin forestalled him. Calmly, she said, “No. The ring is his. Its mark lies deeply within him.”

At that, Chant looked toward his companion; and Linden sagged in relief. The shifting of his gaze gave her a palpable release.

Chant frowned as if Daphin's contradiction broke an unspoken agreement. But she went on addressing Linden. “Yet here is a mystery. All our vision has seen the same truth — that the Sun-Sage and ring-wielder who would come among us in quest are one being. Thereon hinge matters of grave import. And our vision does not lie. Rawedge Rim and Woodenwold do not lie. How may this be explained, Sun-Sage?”

Linden felt Covenant clench as if he were on the verge of fire. “What do you want me to do?” he grated. “Give it up?”

Chant did not deign to glance at him. “Such power ill becomes you. Silence would be more seemly. You stand among those who surpass you. Permit the Sun-Sage to speak.” Notes of anger ran through the music of the bells.

Covenant growled a curse. Sensing his ire, Linden twisted herself out of the grip of the Elohim to face him. His visage Was dark with venom.

Again, his vehemence appeared unnatural-a reaction to the air rather than to his situation or the Elohim. That impression sparked an inchoate urgency in her. Something here outweighed her personal denials. Intuitively, she pitched her voice so that Covenant must hear her.

“I wouldn't be here without him.”

Then she began to tremble at the responsibility she had implicitly accepted.

The next moment, Pitchwife was speaking. “Peace, my friends,” he said. His misshapen face was sharp with uncharacteristic apprehension. “We have journeyed far to gain the boon of these Elohim. Far more than our mere lives hang in jeopardy.” His voice beseeched them softly. “Give no offense.”

Covenant peered at Linden as if he were trying to determine the nature of her support and recognition. Suddenly, she wanted to ask him, Do you hear bells? If he did, he gave no sign. But what he saw in her both tightened and steadied him. Deliberately, he shrugged down his power. Without lifting his scrutiny from Linden, he said to the Elohim, “Forgive me. The reason we're here. It's urgent. I don't carry the strain very well.”

The Elohim ignored him, continued watching Linden. But the timbre of anger drifted away along the music. “Perhaps our vision has been incomplete,” said Daphin. Her voice lilted like birdsong. “Perhaps there is a merging to come. Or a death.”

Merging? Linden thought quickly. Death? She felt the same questions leaping in Covenant. She started to ask, What do you mean?

But Chant had resumed his dangerous smile. Still addressing Linden as though she outranked all her companions, he said abruptly, “It is known that your quest is exigent. We are not a hasty people, but neither do we desire your delay.” Turning, he gestured gracefully along the Callowwail. “Will you accompany us to Elemesnedene?”

Linden needed a moment to muster her response. Too much was happening. She had been following Covenant's lead since she had first met him. She was not prepared to make decisions for him or anyone else.

But she had no choice. At her back crowded the emotions of her companions: Honninscrave's tension, the First's difficult silence, Pitchwife's suspense, Covenant's hot doubt. They all withheld themselves, waited for her. And she had her own reasons for being here. With a grimace, she accepted the role she had been given.

“Thank you,” she said formally. "That's what we came for."

Chant bowed as if she had shown graciousness; but she could not shake the impression that he was laughing at her secretly. Then the two Elohim moved away. Walking as buoyantly as if they shared the analystic clarity of the air, they went out into the yellow grass toward the heart of the maidan. Linden followed them with Cail at her side; and her companions joined her.

She wanted to talk to them, ask them for guidance. But she felt too exposed to speak. Treading behind Chant and Daphin at a slight distance, she tried to steady herself on the tough confidence of the Haruchai.

As she walked, she studied the surrounding maidan, hoping to descry something which would enable her to identify an Elohim who was not wearing human form. But she had not perceived any hint of Daphin or Chant before they had accosted the company; and now she was able to discern nothing except the strong autumn grass, the underlying loam, and the Callowwail's purity. Yet her sense of exposure increased. After a while, she discovered that she had been unconsciously clenching her fists.

With an effort, she ungnarled her fingers, looked at them. She could hardly believe that they had ever held a scalpel or hypodermic. When she dropped them, they dangled at her wrists like strangers.

She did not know how to handle the importance the Elohim had ascribed to her. She could not read the faint clear significance of the bells. Following Chant and Daphin, she felt that she was walking into a quagmire.

An odd thought crossed her mind. The Elohim had given no word of recognition to Vain. The Demondim-spawn still trailed the company like a shadow; yet Chant and Daphin had not reacted to him at all. She wondered about that, but found no explanation.

Sooner than she had expected, the fountainhead of the Callowwail became visible-a cloud of mist set in the centre of the maidan like an ornament. As she neared it, it stood out more clearly through its spray.

It arose like a geyser from within a high mound of travertine. Its waters arched in clouds and rainbows to fall around the base of the mound, where they collected to form the

River. The water looked as edifying as crystal, as clinquant as faery promises; but the travertine it had formed and dampened appeared obdurate, uncompromising. The mound seemed to huddle into itself as if it could not be moved by any appeal. The whorled and skirling shapes on its sides-cut and deposited by ages of spray, the old scrollwork of the water-gave it an elusive eloquence, but did not alter its essential posture.

Beckoning for the company to follow, Daphin and Chant stepped lightly through the stream and climbed as easily as air up the side of the wet rock.

There without warning they vanished as if they had melded themselves into travertine.

Linden stopped, stared. Her senses caught no trace of the Elohim. The bells were barely audible.

Behind her, Honninscrave cleared his throat. “Elemesnedene,” he said huskily. “The clachan of the Elohim. I had not thought that I would see such sights again.”

Covenant scowled at the Master. “What do we do now?”

For the first time since Starfare's Gem had dropped anchor outside the Raw, Honninscrave laughed. “As our welcomers have done. Enter.”

Linden started to ask him how., then changed her mind. Now that the silence had been broken, another question was more important to her. “Do any of you hear bells?”

The First looked at her sharply. “Bells?”

Pitchwife's expression mirrored the First's ignorance. Seadreamer shook his head. Brinn gave a slight negative shrug.

Slowly, Honninscrave said, “The Elohim are not a musical folk. I have heard no bells or any song here. And all the tales which the Giants tell of Elemesnedene make no mention of bells.”

Linden groaned to herself. Once again, she was alone in what she perceived. Without hope, she turned to Covenant.

He was not looking at her. He was staring like a thunder-head at the fountain. His left hand twisted his ring around and around the last finger of his half-hand.

“Covenant?” she asked.

He did not answer her question. Instead, he muttered between his teeth, “They think I'm going to fail. I don't need that. I didn't come all this way to hear that.” He hated the thought of failure in every line of his gaunt stubborn form.

But then his purpose stiffened. “Let's get going. You're the Sun-Sage.” His tone was full of sharp edges and gall. For the sake of his quest, he fought to accept the roles the Elohim had assigned. “You should go first.”

She started to deny once again that she was any kind of Sun-Sage. That might comfort him-or at least limit the violence coiling inside him. But again her sense of exposure warned her to silence. Instead of speaking, she faced the stream and the mound, took a deep breath, held it. Moving half a step ahead of Cail, she walked into the water,

At once, a hot tingling shot through her calves, soaked down into her feet. For one heartbeat, she almost winced away. But then her nerves told her that the sensation was not harmful. It bristled across the surface of her skin like formication, but did no damage. Biting down on her courage, she strode through the stream and clambered out onto the old intaglio of the travertine. With Cail at her side, she began to ascend the mound.

Suddenly, power seemed to flash around her as if she had been dropped like a coal into a tinderbox. Bells clanged in her head-chimes ringing in cotillion on all sides. Bubbles of glauconite and carbuncle burst in her blood; the air burned like a thurible; the world reeled.

The next instant, she staggered into a wonderland.

Stunned and gaping, she panted for breath. She had been translated by water and travertine to another place altogether-a place of eldritch astonishment.

An opalescent sky stretched over her, undefined by any sun or moon, or by any clear horizons, and yet brightly luminous and warm. The light seemed to combine moonglow and sunshine. It had the suggestive evanescence of night and the specificity of day. And under its magic, wonders thronged in corybantic succession.

Nearby grew a silver sapling. Though not tall, it was as stately as a prince; and its leaves danced about its limbs without touching them. Like flakes of precious metal, the leaves formed a chiaroscuro around the tree, casting glints and spangles as they swirled.

On the other side, a fountain spewed globes of colour and light. Bobbing upward, they broke into silent rain and were inhaled again by the fountain.

A furry shape like a jarcol went gambolling past and appeared to trip. Sprawling, it became a profuse scatter of flowers. Blooms that resembled peony and amaryllis sprayed open across the glistening greensward.

Birds flew overhead, warbling incarnate. Cavorting in circles, they swept against each other, merged to form an abrupt pillar of fire in the air. A moment later, the fire leaped into sparks, and the sparks became gems — ruby and morganite, sapphire and porphyry, like a trail of stars-and the gems wafted away, turning to butterflies as they floated.

A hillock slowly pirouetted to itself, taking arcane shapes one after another as it turned.

And these were only the nearest entrancements. Other sights abounded: grand statues of water; a pool with its surface' woven like an arras; shrubs which flowed through a myriad elegant forms; catenulate sequences of marble, draped from nowhere to nowhere; animals that leaped into the air as birds and drifted down again as snow; swept-wing shapes of malachite flying in gracile curves; sunflowers the size of Giants, with imbricated ophite petals.

And everywhere rang the music of bells — cymbals in carillon, chimes wefted into tapestries of tinkling, tones scattered on all sides — the metal-and-crystal language of Elemesnedene.

Linden could not take it all in: it dazzled her senses, left her gasping. When the silver sapling near her poured itself into human form and became Chant, she recoiled. She could hardly grasp the truth of what she saw.

These-?

Oh my God.

As if in confirmation, a tumble of starlings swept to the ground and transformed themselves into Daphin.

Then Covenant's voice breathed softly behind her, “Hellfire and bloody damnation,” and she became aware of her companions.

Turning, she saw them all-the Giants, the Haruchai, even Vain. But of the way they had come there was no sign. The fountainhead of the Callowwail, the mound of travertine, even the maidan did not exist in this place. The company stood on a low knoll surrounded by astonishments.

For a moment, she remained dumbfounded. But then Covenant clutched her forearm with his half-hand, clung to her. “What-?” he groped to ask, not looking at her. His grip gave her an anchor on which to steady herself.

“The Elohim,” she answered. “They're the Elohim.”

Honninscrave nodded as if he were speechless with memory and hope.

Pitchwife was laughing soundlessly. His eyes feasted on Elemesnedene. But the First's mien was grim-tensely aware that the company had no line of retreat and could not afford to give any offense. And Seadreamer's orbs above the old scar were smudged with contradictions, as if his Giantish accessibility to exaltation were in conflict with the Earth-Sight.

“Be welcome in our clachan,'” said Chant. He took pleasure in the amazement of the company. “Set all care aside. You have no need of it here. However urgent your purpose, Elemesnedene is not a place which any mortal may regret to behold.”

“Nor will we regret it,” the First replied carefully. “We are Giants and know the value of wonder. Yet our urgency is a burden we dare not shirk. May we speak of the need which has brought us among you?”

A slight frown creased Chant's forehead. "Your haste gives scant worth to our welcome. We are not Giants or other children, to be so questioned in what we do.

“Also,” he went on, fixing Linden with his jacinth-eyes, “none are admitted to the Elohimfest, in which counsel and gifts are bespoken and considered, until they have submitted themselves to our examination. We behold the truth in you. But the spirit in which you bear that truth must be laid bare. Will you accept to be examined?”

Examined? Linden queried herself. She did not know how to meet the demand of Chant's gaze. Uncertainly, she turned to Honninscrave.

He answered her mute question with a smile. “It is as I have remembered it. There is no need of fear.”

Covenant started to speak, then stopped. The hunching of his shoulders said plainly that he could think of reasons to fear any examination.

“The Giant remembers truly.” Daphin's voice was irenic and reassuring. “It is said among us that the heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling. We intend no intrusion. We desire only to have private speech with you, so that in the rise and fall of your words we may judge the spirit within you. Come.” Smiling like a sunrise, she stepped forward, took Linden's arm. “Will you not accompany me?”

When Linden hesitated, the Elohim added, “Have no concern for your comrades. In your name they are as safe among us as their separate needs permit.”

Events were moving too quickly. Linden did not know how to respond. She could not absorb all the sights and enhancements around her, could barely hold back the bells so that they did not deafen her mind. She was not prepared for such decisions.

But she had spent her life learning to make choices and face the consequences. And her experiences in the Land had retaught her the importance of movement. Keep going. Take things as they come. Find out what happens. Abruptly, she acquiesced to Daphin's slight pressure on her arm. “I'll come. You can ask me anything you want.”

“Ah, Sun-Sage,” the Elohim rejoined with a light laugh, “I will ask you nothing. You will ask me.”

Nothing? Linden did not understand. And Covenant's glare burned against the back of her neck as if she were participating in the way the Elohim demeaned him. He had travelled an arduous road to his power and did not deserve such treatment. But she would not retreat. She had risked his life for Mistweave's. Now she risked his pride, though the angry confusion he emitted hurt her. Accepting Daphin's touch, she started away down the knoll.

At the same time, other shapes in the area resolved themselves into human form-more Elohim coming to examine the rest of the company. Though she was now braced for the sight, she was still dazed to see trees, fountains, dancing aggregations of gems melt so unexpectedly into more familiar beings. As Cail placed himself protectively at her side opposite Daphin, she found a keen comfort in his presence. He was as reliable as stone. Amid the wild modulations of the clachan, she needed his stability.

They had not reached the bottom of the slope when Chant said sharply, “No.”

At once, Daphin stopped. Deftly, she turned Linden to face the company.

Chant was looking at Linden. His gaze had the biting force of an augur. “Sun-Sage.” He sounded distant through the warning clatter of the bells. “You must accompany Daphin alone. Each of your companions must be examined alone.”

Alone? she protested. It was too much. How could such a stricture include Cail? He was one of the Haruchai. And she needed him. The sudden acuity of her need for him took her by surprise. She was already so alone—

She gathered herself to remonstrate. But Cail preceded her. “The Chosen is in my care,” he said in a voice as flat as a wall. “I will accompany her.”

His intransigence drew Chant's attention. The Elohim's easy elegance tightened toward hauteur. “No,” he repeated. “I care nothing for such care. It is not binding here. Like the Sun-Sage, you will go alone to be examined.”

Covenant moved. The First made a warding gesture, urging forbearance. He ignored her. Softly, he grated, “Or else?”

“Or else,” Chant mimicked in subtle mockery, “he will be banished to the place of shades, from whence none return.”

“By hell!” Covenant rasped. “Over my dead-”

Before he could finish, the four Haruchai burst into motion. On the spur of a shared impulse, they hurled themselves forward in attack. Brinn launched a flying kick at Chant's chest. Ceer and Hergrom threw body-blocks toward other Elohim. Cail slashed at Daphin's legs, aiming to cut her feet from under her.

None of their blows had any effect.

Chant misted as Brinn struck. The Haruchai plunged straight through him, touching nothing. Then Chant became a tangle of vines that caught and immobilized Brinn. Daphin sprouted wings and rose lightly above Cail's blow. Before he could recover, she poured down on him like viscid spilth, clogging his movements until he was paralyzed. And the Elohim assailed by Ceer and Hergrom slumped effortlessly into quicksand, snaring them at once.

The Giants watched. Honninscrave stared in dismay, unready for the violence which boiled so easily past the smooth surface of Elemesnedene. Seadreamer tried to charge to the aid of the Haruchai; but the First and Pitchwife held him back.

“No” Among the Giants, Covenant stood like imminent fire, facing the Elohim with wild magic poised in every muscle. His passion dominated the knoll. In a low voice, as dangerous as a viper, he articulated, “You can discount me. That's been done before. But the Haruchai are my friends. You will not harm them.”

“That choice is not yours to make!” Chant retorted. But now it was he who sounded petulant and diminished.

Chant.“ Daphin's voice came quietly from the sludge imprisoning Cail. ”Bethink you. It is enough. No further purpose is served."

For a moment, Chant did not respond. But the bells took on a coercive note; and abruptly he shrugged himself back into human shape. At the same time, Daphin flowed away from Cail, and the other two Elohim arose from the quicksand as men. The Haruchai were free.

“Sun-Sage,” said Chant, nailing Linden with his gaze, “these beings stand under the shelter of your name. They will suffer no harm. But this offense surpasses all endurance. Elemesnedene will not permit it. What is your will?”

Linden almost choked on the raw edges of the retort she wished to make. She wanted words which would scathe Chant, shame all the Elohim. She needed Cail with her. And the extravagance of his outrage was vivid behind the flatness of his face. The service of the Haruchai deserved more respect than this. But she clung to forbearance. The company had too much to lose. None of them could afford an open break with the Elohim. In spite of the secret perils of the clachan, she made her decision.

“Put them back on the maidan. Near the fountain. Let them wait for us. Safely.”

Covenant's visage flamed protest at her, then fell into a grimace of resignation. But it made no difference. Chant had already nodded.

At once, the four Haruchai began to float away from the knoll. They were not moving themselves. The ground under their feet swept them backward, as if they were receding along a tide. And as they went, they faded like vapour.

But before they were dispelled, Linden caught one piercing glance from Cail-a look of reproach as if he had been betrayed. His voice lingered in her after he was gone.

“We do not trust these Elohim”

Chant snorted. “Let him speak of trust when he has become less a fool. These matters are too high for him, and so he thinks in his arrogance to scorn them. He must count himself fortunate that he has not paid the price of our displeasure.”

“Your displeasure!” Linden controlled herself with difficulty. “You're just looking for excuses to be displeased.” Cail's last look panged her deeply. And the magnitude of what she had just done made her tremble. "We came here in good faith. And the Haruchai are good faith. They don't deserve to be dismissed. I'll be lucky if they ever forgive me. They're never going to forgive you,"

The First made a cautioning gesture. But when Linden looked stiffly in that direction, she saw a grim satisfaction in the First's eyes. Honninscrave appeared distressed; but Seadreamer was nodding, and Covenant's features were keen with indignation and approval.

“Your pardon.” In an instant, Chant donned an urbane calm like a second mantle. “My welcoming has been unseemly. Though you know it not, my intent has been to serve the purpose which impels you. Let me make amends. Ring-wielder, will you accompany me?”

The invitation startled Covenant. But then he gritted, “Try to stop me.”

Riding the effect of his approval, Linden turned to Daphin. “I'm ready when you are.”

Daphin's countenance betrayed neither conflict nor disdain. “You are gracious. I am pleased.” Taking Linden's arm once again, she led her away from the company.

When Linden glanced backward, she saw that all her companions were moving in different directions, each accompanied by an Elohim. A dim sense of incompleteness, of something missing, afflicted her momentarily; but she attributed it to the absence of the Haruchai and let Daphin guide her away among the wonders of Elemesnedene.

But she detached her arm from the Elohim's touch. She did not want Daphin to feel her reactions. For all its amazements, the clachan suddenly seemed a cold and joyless place, where beings of inbred life and convoluted intent mimed an exuberance they were unable to share.

And yet on every hand Elemesnedene contradicted her. Sportive and gratuitous incarnations were everywhere as far as she could see-pools casting rainbows of iridescent fish; mists composed of a myriad ice crystals; flowers whose every leaf and petal burned like a cruse. And each of them was an Elohim, enacting transformations for reasons which eluded her. The whole of the clachan appeared to be one luxurious entertainment.

But who was meant to be entertained by it? Daphin moved as if she were bemused by her own thoughts, unaware of what transpired around her. And each performance appeared hermetic and self-complete. In no discernible way did they co-operate with or observe each other. Was this entire display performed for no other reason than the simple joy of wonder and play?

Her inability to answer such questions disturbed Linden. Like the language of the bells, the Elohim surpassed her. She had been learning to rely on. the Land-born penetration of her senses; but here that ability did not suffice. When she looked at a fountain of feathers or a glode of ophite, she only knew that it was one of the Elohim because she had already witnessed similar incarnations. She could not see a sentient being in the gavotte of butterflies or the budding of liquid saplings, just as she had not seen Chant and Daphin in the earth near her feet. And she could not pierce Daphin's blank beauty to whatever lay within. The spirit of what she saw and heard was beyond her reach. All she could descry clearly was power-an essential puissance that seemed to transcend every structure or law of existence. Whatever the Elohim were, they were too much for her.

Then she began to wonder if that were the purpose of her examination-to learn how much of the truth she could discern, how much she was worthy of the role the Elohim had seen in her. If so, the test was one she had already failed.

But she refused to be daunted. Covenant would not have surrendered his resolve. She could see him limned in danger and old refusal, prepared to battle doom itself in order to wrest out survival for the Land he loved. Very well. She would do no less.

Girding herself in severity, she turned her mind to her examination.

Daphin had said, I will ask you nothing. You will ask me. That made more sense to her now. She might reveal much in her questions. But she accepted the risk and looked for ways to gain information while exposing as little as possible.

She took a moment to formulate her words clearly against the incessant background of the bells, then asked in her flat professional voice, “Where are we going?”

“Going?” replied Daphin lightly. “We are not 'going' at all. We merely walk.” When Linden stared at her, she continued, “This is Elemesnedene itself. Here there is no other 'where' to which we might go.”

Deliberately, Linden exaggerated her surface incomprehension. "There has to be. We're moving. My friends are some-where else. How will we get back to them? How will we find that Elohimfest Chant mentioned?"

“Ah, Sun-Sage,” Daphin chuckled. Her laugh sounded like a moonrise in this place which had neither moon nor sun. “In Elemesnedene all ways are one. We will meet with your companions when that meeting has ripened. And there will be no need to seek the place of the Elohimfest. It will be held at the centre, and in Elemesnedene all places are the centre. We walk from the centre to the centre, and where we now walk is also the centre.”

Is that what happened to those Giants who decided to stay here? Linden barely stopped herself from speaking aloud. Did they just start walking and never find each other again until they died?

But she kept the thought to herself. It revealed too much of her apprehension and distrust. Instead, she chose an entirely different reaction. In a level tone, as if she were simply reporting symptoms, she said, “Well, I've been walking all day, and I'm tired. I need some rest.”

This was not true. Though she had not eaten or rested since the quest had left Starfare's Gem, she felt as fresh as if she had just arisen from a good sleep and a satisfying meal. Somehow, the atmosphere of the clachan met all her physical needs. She made her assertion simply to see how Daphin would respond.

The Elohim appeared to perceive the lie; yet she delicately refrained from challenging it. “There is no weariness in Elemesnedene,''' she said, ”and walking is pleasant. Yet it is also pleasant to sit or to recline. Here is a soothing place." She indicated the slope of a low grassy hill nearby. On the hillcrest stood a large willow leaved entirely in butterfly-wings; and at the foot of the slope lay a still vlei with colours floating across its surface like a lacustrine portrait of the clachan itself. Daphin moved onto the hillside and sat down, disposing her cymar gracefully about her.

Linden followed. When she had found a comfortable position upon the lush grass, she framed her next question.

Pointing toward the vlei, she asked, “Is that a man or a woman?” Her words sounded crude beside Daphin's beauty; but she made no attempt to soften them. She did not like exposing her impercipience; but she guessed that her past actions had already made the Elohim aware of this limitation.

“Morninglight?” replied Daphin, gazing at the colour-swept water. “You would name him a man.”

“What's he doing?”

Daphin returned her apple-green eyes to Linden. “Sun-Sage, what question is this? Are we not in Elemesnedene ? In the sense of your word, there is no 'doing' here. This is not an act with a purpose such as you name purpose. Morninglight performs self-contemplation. He enacts the truth of his being as he beholds it, and thus he explores that truth, beholding and enacting new truth. We are the Elohim. For certain visions we look elsewhere. The 'doing' of which you speak is more easily read on the surface of the Earth than in its heart. But all truths are within us, and for these truths we seek into ourselves.”

“Then,” Linden asked, reacting to a curious detachment in Daphin's tone, “you don't watch him? You don't pay attention to each other? This”-she indicated Morninglight's water-show-“isn't intended to communicate something?”

The question seemed to give Daphin a gentle surprise. “What is the need? I also am the heart of the Earth, as he is. Wherefore should I desire his truth, when I may freely seek my own?”

This answer appeared consistent to Linden; and yet its self-sufficiency baffled her. How could any being be so complete? Daphin sat there in her loveliness and her inward repose, as if she had never asked herself a question for which she did not already know the answer. Her personal radiance shone like hints of sunlight, and when she spoke her voice was full of moonbeams. Linden did not trust her. But now she comprehended the wonder and excitement, the awe bordering on adoration, which Honninscrave had learned to feel toward these people.

Still she could not shake off her tremorous inner disquiet. The bells would not leave her alone. They came so close to meaning, but she could not decipher their message. Her nerves tightened involuntarily.

“That's not what Chant thinks. He thinks his truth is the only one there is.”

Daphin's limpid gaze did not waver. “Perhaps that is true. Where is the harm? He is but one Elohim among many. And yet,” she went on after a moment's consideration, "he was not always so. He has found within himself a place of shadow which he must explore. All who live contain some darkness, and much lies hidden there. Surely it is perilous, as any shadow which encroaches upon the light is perilous. But in us it has not been a matter of exigency-for are we not equal to all things? Yet for Chant that shadow has become exigent. Risking much, as he does, he grows impatient with those who have not yet beheld or entered the shadows cast by their own truths. And others tread this path with him.

“Sun-Sage.” Now a new intentness shone from Daphin-the light of a clear desire. "This you must comprehend. We are the Elohim, the heart of the Earth. We stand at the centre of all that lives and moves and is. We live in peace because there are none who can do us hurt, and if it were our choice to sit within Elemesnedene and watch the Earth age until the end of Time, there would be none to gainsay us. No other being or need may judge us, just as the hand may not judge the heart which gives it life.

"But because we are the heart, we do not shirk the burden of the truth within us. We have said that our vision foreknew the coming of Sun-Sage and ring-wielder. It is cause for concern that they are separate. There is great need that Sun-Sage and ring-wielder should be one. Nevertheless the coming itself was known. In the mountains which cradle our clachan, we see the peril of this Sunbane which requires you to your quest. And in the trees of Woodenwold we have read your arrival.

"Yet had such knowing comprised the limit of our knowledge, you would have been welcomed here merely as other visitors are welcomed, in simple kindness and curiosity. But our knowledge is not so small. We have found within ourselves this shadow upon the heart of the Earth, and it has altered our thoughts. It has taught us to conceive of the Sunbane in new ways-and to reply to the Earth's peril in a manner other than our wont.

“You have doubted us. And your doubt will remain. Perhaps it will grow until it resembles loathing. Yet I say to you, Sun-Sage, that you judge us falsely. That you should presume to judge us at all is incondign and displeasing. We are the heart of the Earth and not to be judged.”

Daphin spoke strongly; but she did not appear vexed. Rather, she asked for understanding in the way a parent might ask a child for good behaviour. Her tone abashed Linden. But she also rebelled. Daphin was asking her to give up her responsibility for discernment and action; and she would not. That responsibility was her reason for being here, and she had earned it.

Then the bells seemed to rise up in her like the disapproval of Elemesnedene. “What are you?” she inquired in a constrained voice. “The heart of the Earth. The centre. The truth. What does all that mean?”

“Sun-Sage,” replied Daphin, “we are the Wurd of the Earth.”

She spoke clearly, but her tone was confusing. Her Wurd sounded like Wyrd or Word.

Wyrd? Linden thought. Destiny — doom? Or Word?

Or both.

Into the silence, Daphin placed her story. It was an account of the creation of the Earth; and Linden soon realised that it was the same tale Pitchwife had told her during the calling of the Nicor. Yet it contained one baffling difference. Daphin did not speak of a Worm. Rather, she used that blurred sound, Wurd, which seemed to signify both Wyrd and Word.

This Wurd had awakened at the dawning of the eon and begun to consume the stars as if it intended to devour the cosmos whole. After a time, it had grown satiated and had curled around itself to rest, thus forming the Earth. And thus the Earth would remain until the Wurd roused to resume its feeding.

It was precisely the same story Pitchwife had told. Had the Giants who had first brought that tale out of Elemesnedene misheard it? Or had the Elohim pronounced it differently to other visitors?

As if in answer, Daphin concluded, “Sun-Sage, we are the Wurd-the direct offspring of the creation of the Earth. From it we arose, and in it we have our being. Thus we are the heart, and the centre, and the truth, and therefore we are what we are. We are all answers, just as we are every question. For that reason, you must not judge the reply which we will give to your need.”

Linden hardly heard the Elohim. Her mind was awhirl with implications. Intuitions rang against the limits of her understanding like the clamour of bells. We are the Wurd. Morninglight swirling with colour like a portrait of the clachan in metaphor. A willow leaved in butterflies. Self-contemplation.

Power.

Eight: The Elohimfest

WHAT the hell?

Linden could not move. The lucidity with which the soundless bells had spoken staggered her. She gaped at Daphin's outstretched hand. It made no impression on her. Feverishly, she grappled for the meaning of the music.

We must hasten-

Had she heard that — or invented it in her confusion?

Hear us too acutely.

Her Land-born percipience had stumbled onto something she had not been intended to receive. The speakers of the bells did not want her to know what they were saying.

She fought to concentrate. But she could not take hold of that language. Though it hushed itself as she groped toward it, it did not fall altogether silent. It continued to run in the background of her awareness like a conversation of fine crystal. And yet it eluded her. The more she struggled to comprehend it, the more it sounded like mere bells and nothing else.

Daphin and Morninglight were gazing at her as if they could read the rush of her thoughts. She needed to be left alone, needed time to think. But the eyes of the Elohim did not waver. Her trepidation tightened, and she recognized another need-to keep both the extent and the limitation of her hearing secret. If she were not intended to discern these bells, then in order to benefit from them she must conceal what she heard.

She had to glean every secret she could. Behind Daphin's apparent candour, the Elohim were keeping their true purposes hidden. And Covenant and the rest of her companions were dependent on her, whether they knew it or not. They did not have her ears.

The music had not been silenced. Therefore she had not entirely given herself away. Yet. Trying to cover her confusion, she blinked at Daphin and asked incredulously, “Is that all? You're done examining me? You don't know anything about me.”

Daphin laughed lightly. “Sun-Sage, this 'examining' is like the 'doing' of which you speak so inflexibly. For us, the word has another meaning. I have considered myself and garnered all the truth of you that I require. Now come.” She repeated the outreach of her hand. “Have I not said that the Elohimfest awaits you? There the coming of Infelice will offer another insight. And also we will perform the asking and answering for which you have quested over such distances. Is it not your desire to attend that congregation?”

“Yes,” replied Linden, suppressing her discomfiture. “That's what I want.” She had forgotten her hopes amid the disquieting implications of the bells. But her friends would have to be warned. She would have to find a way to warn them against the danger they could not hear. Stiffly, she accepted Daphin's hand, let the Elohim lift her to her feet.

With Daphin on one side and Morninglight on the other like guards, she left the hillside.

She had no sense of direction in this place; but she did not question Daphin's lead. Instead, she concentrated on concealing her thoughts behind a mask of severity.

On all sides were the wonders of Elemesnedene. Bedizened trees and flaming shrubs, fountains imbued with the colour of ichor, animals emblazoned like tapestries: everywhere the Elohim enacted astonishment as if it were merely gratuitous — the spilth or detritus of their self-contemplations. But now each of these nonchalant theurgies appeared ominous to Linden, suggestive of peril and surquedry. The bells chimed in her head. Though she fought to hold them, they meant nothing.

For one blade-sharp moment, she felt as she had felt when she had first entered Revelstone: trapped in the coercion of Santonin's power, riven of every reason which had ever given shape or will to her life. Here the compulsion was more subtle; but it was as cloying as attar, and it covered everything with its pall. If the Elohim did not choose to release her, she would never leave Elemesnedene.

Yet surely this was not Revelstone, and the Elohim had nothing in common with Ravers, for Daphin's smile conveyed no hint of underlying mendacity, and her eyes were the colour of new leaves in springtime. And as she passed, the wonderments put aside their self-absorption to join her and the Sun-Sage. Melting, swirling, condensing into human form, they greeted Linden as if she were the heir to some strange majesty, then arrayed themselves behind her and moved in silence and chiming toward the conclave of the Elohimfest. Apparelled in cymars and mantles, in sendaline and jaconet and organdy like the cortege of a celebration, they followed Linden as if to do her honour. Once again, she felt the enchantment of the clachan exercising itself upon her, wooing her from her distrust.

But as the Elohim advanced with her, the land behind them lost all its features, became a vaguely undulating emptiness under a moonstone sky. In its own way, Elemesnedene without the activity of the Elohim was as barren and sterile as a desert.

Ahead lay the only landmark Linden had seen in the whole of the clachan- a broad ring of dead elms. They stood fingering the opalescent air with their boughs like stricken sentinels, encompassing a place which had slain them eons ago. Her senses were able to discern the natural texture of their wood, the sapless dessication in their hearts, the black and immemorial death of their upraised limbs. But she did not understand why natural trees could not endure in a habitation of Elohim.

As she neared them, escorted by Daphin and Morninglight and a bright procession of Elohim, she saw that they ringed a broad low bare hill which shone with accentuated light like an eftmound. Somehow, the hill appeared to be the source of all the illumination in Elemesnedene. Or perhaps this effect was caused by the way the sky lowered over the eftmound so that the hill and the sky formed a hub around which the dead elms stood in frozen revolution. Passing between the trees, Linden felt that she was entering the core of an epiphany.

More Elohim were arriving from all sides. They flowed forward in their lambency like images of everything that made the Earth lovely; and for a moment Linden's throat tightened at the sight. She could not reconcile the conflicts these folk aroused in her, did not know where the truth lay. But for that moment she felt sure she would never again meet any people so capable of beauty.

Then her attention shifted as her companions began to ascend the eftmound from various directions around the ring. Honninscrave strode there with his head high and his face aglow as if he had revisited one of his most precious memories. And from the other side came Pitchwife. When he saw the First approaching near him, he greeted her with a shout of love that brought tears to Linden's eyes, making everything pure for an instant.

Blinking away the blur, she espied Seadreamer's tall form rising beyond the crest of the hill. Like the First, he did not appear to share Honninscrave's joy. Her countenance was dour and self-contained, as if in her examination she had won a stern victory. But his visage wore a look of active pain like a recognition of peril which his muteness would not permit him to explain.

Alarmed by the implications in his eyes, Linden quickly scanned the eftmound, hunting for a glimpse of Covenant.

For a moment, he was nowhere to be seen. But then he came around the hill toward her.

He moved as if all his muscles were taut and fraying; his emanations were shrill with tension. In some way, his examination had proved costly to him. Yet the sight of him, white-knuckled and rigid though he was, gave Linden an infusion of relief. Now she was no longer alone.

He approached her stiffly. His eyes were as sharp and affronted as shards of mica. Chant was a few paces behind him, smirking like a goad. As Covenant brought his raw emotions close to her, her relief changed to dismay and ire. She wanted to shout at Chant, What have you done to him?

Covenant stopped in front of her. His shoulders hunched. In a tight voice, he asked, “You all right?”

She shrugged away the surface of his question. What did Chant do to you? She ached to put her arms around him, but did not know how. She never knew how to help him. Grimly, she gripped herself, searched for a way to warn him of what she had learned. She could not put together any words that sounded innocent enough, so she assumed a tone of deliberate nonchalance and took the risk of saying, “I wish I could talk to you about it. Cail had a good point.”

“I got that impression.” His voice was harsh. Since their first meeting with the Elohim, he had been on the verge of violence. Now he sounded rife with potential eruptions. “Chant here tried to talk me into giving him my ring.”

Linden gaped. Her encounter with Daphin had not prepared her for the possibility that her companions might be examined more roughly.

“He had a lot to say on the subject,” Covenant went on. Behind his asperity, he was savage with distress. “These Elohim consider themselves the centre of the Earth. According to him, everything important happens here. The rest of the world is like a shadow cast by Elemesnedene. Foul and the Sunbane are just symptoms. The real disease is something else-he didn't bother to say exactly what. Something about a darkness threatening the heart of the Earth. He wants my ring. He wants the wild magic. So he can attack the disease.”

Linden started to protest, He doesn't need it. He's Earthpower. But she was unsure of what she could afford to reveal.

“When I said no, he told me it doesn't matter.” Chant's mien wore an imperious confirmation. "According to him, I don't count. I'm already defeated.“ Covenant bit out the words, chewing their fundamental gall. ”Anything that happens to me is all right."

Linden winced for him. Trying to tell him that she understood, she said, “Now you know how I feel every day.”

But her attempt misfired. His brows knotted. His eyes were as poignant as splinters. “I don't need to be reminded.” The Giants had gathered at his back. They stood listening with incomprehension in their faces. But he was caught up in bitterness and seemed unaware of the hurt he flung at Linden. "Why do you think you're here? Everybody expects me to fail."

“I don't!” she snapped back at him, suddenly uncaring that she might hurt him in return. “That isn't what I meant.”

Her vehemence stopped him. He faced her, gaunt with memory and fear. When he spoke again, he had regained some measure of self-command. “I'm sorry. I'm not doing very well here. I don't like being this dangerous.”

She accepted his apology with a wooden nod. What else could she do? Behind it, his purpose had hardened to the texture of adamantine. But she did not know what that purpose was. How far did he intend to go?

Holding himself like stone, he turned from her to the Giants. Brusquely, he acknowledged them. The First could not conceal the worry in her eyes. Pitchwife emitted a bright empathy that told nothing of his own examination; but Honninscrave appeared perplexed, unable to reconcile Covenant's report and Linden's attitude with his own experiences. Once again, Linden wondered what kind of bargain it was he so clearly hoped to make.

More Elohim continued to arrive, so many now that they filled the inner curve of the elm-ring and spread halfway up the slopes of the eftmound. Their movements made a murmurous rustling, but they passed among each other without speaking. They were as composed and contained here as they had been in their rites of self-contemplation. Only the bells conveyed any sense of communication. Frowning, she strove once more to catch the gist of the chiming. But it remained alien and unreachable, like a foreign tongue that was familiar in sound but not in meaning.

Then her attention was arrested by the approach of another Elohim. When he first entered the ring, she did not notice him. Neither his clean white flesh nor his creamy robe distinguished him from the gracile throng. But as he drew nearer-walking with an aimless aspect around the hill-he attracted her eyes like a lodestone. The sight of him sent a shiver down her spine. He was the first Elohim she had seen who chose to wear an appearance of misery.

He had taken a form which looked like it had been worn and whetted by hardship. His limbs were lean, exposing the interplay of the muscles; his skin had the pale tautness of scar-tissue; his hair hung to his shoulders in a sweep of unkempt silver. His brows, his cheeks, the corners of his eyes, all were cut with the toolwork of difficulty and trepidation. Around the vague yellow of his eyes, his sockets were as dark as old rue. And he moved with the stiffness of a man who had just been cudgelled.

He did not accost the company, but rather went on his way among the Elohim, as heedless of them as they were of him. Staring after him, Linden abruptly risked another question.

“Who was that!” she asked Daphin.

Without a glance at either the man or Linden, Daphin replied, “He is Findail the Appointed.”

“ 'Appointed?' ” Linden pursued. “What does that mean?”

Her companions listened intently. Though they lacked her sight, they had not failed to notice Findail. Among so many elegant Elohim,he wore his pains like the marks of torment.

“Sun-Sage,” said Daphin lightly, "he bears a grievous burden. He has been Appointed to meet the cost of our wisdom.

"We are a people united by our vision. I have spoken of this. The truths which Morninglight finds within himself, I also contain. In this way we are made strong and sure. But in such strength and surety there is also hazard. A truth which one sees may perchance pass unseen by others. We do not blithely acknowledge such failure, for how may one among us say to another, 'My truth is greater than yours'? And there are none in all the world to gainsay us. But it is our wisdom to be cautious.

“Therefore whensoever there is a need upon the Earth which requires us, one is Appointed to be our wisdom. According to the need, his purpose varies. In one age, the Appointed may deny our unity, challenging us to seek more deeply for the truth. In another, he may be named to fulfil that unity.” For an instant, her tone took on a more ominous colour. “In all ages, he pays the price of doubt. Findail will hazard his life against the Earth's doom.”

Doom? The idea gave Linden a pang. How? Was Findail like Covenant, then-accepting the cost for an entire people? What cost? What had the Elohim seen for which they felt responsible-and yet were unwilling to explain?

What did they know of the Despiser? Was he Chant's shadow?

Her gaze continued to follow Findail. But while she grappled with her confusion, a change came over the eftmound. All the Elohim stopped moving, and Daphin gave a smile of anticipation. “Ah, Sun-Sage,” she breathed. “Infelice comes. Now begins the Elohimfest.”

Infelice? Linden asked mutely. But the bells gave no answer.

The Elohim had turned toward her left. When she looked in that direction, she saw a figure of light approaching from beyond the elms. It cast the tree limbs into black relief. With the grave and stately stride of a thurifer, the figure entered the ring, passed among the people to the crest of the hill. There she halted and faced the company of the quest.

She was a tall woman, and her loveliness was as lucent as gemfire. Her hair shone. Her supple form shed gleams like a sea in moonlight. Her raiment was woven of diamonds, adorned with rubies. A penumbra of glory outlined her against the trees and the sky. She was Infelice, and she stood atop the eftmound like the crown of every wonder in Elemesnedene.

Her sovereign eyes passed over the company, came to Linden, met and held her stare. Under that gaze, Linden's knees grew weak. She felt a yearning to abase herself before this regal figure. Surely humility was the only just response to such a woman. Honninscrave was already on his knees, and the other Giants were following his example.

But Covenant remained upright, an icon graven of hard bone and intransigence. And none of the Elohim had given Infelice any obeisance except their rapt silence. Only the music of the bells sounded like worship. Linden locked her joints and strove to hold her own against the grandeur of that woman's gaze.

Then Infelice looked away; and Linden almost sagged in relief. Raising her arms, Infelice addressed her people in a voice like the ringing of light crystal. “I am come. Let us begin.”

Without warning or preparation, the Elohimfest commenced.

The sky darkened as if an inexplicable nightfall had come to Elemesnedene, exposing a firmament empty of stars. But the Elohim took light from Infelice. In the new dusk, they were wrapped around the eftmound like a mantle, multi-coloured and alive. And their gleaming aspired to the outreach of Infelice's arms. Viridian and crimson lights, emerald and essential white intensified like a spray of coruscation, mounting toward conflagration. A rainbow of fires rose up the hill. And as they grew stronger, the wind began to blow.

It tugged at Linden's shirt, ran through her hair like the chill fingers of a ghost. She clutched at Covenant for support; but somehow she lost him. She was alone in the emblazoned gloaming and the wind. It piled against her until she staggered. The darkness increased as the lights grew brighter. She could not locate the Giants, could not touch any of the Elohim. All the material substance of Elemesnedene had become wind, and the wind cycled around the eftmound as if Infelice had invoked it, giving it birth by the simple words of her summoning.

Linden staggered again, fell; but the ground was blown out from under her. Above her, globes of Elohim-fire had taken to the air. They were gyring upward like the sparks of a blaze in the heart of the Earth, wind-borne into the heavens. The starless sky became a bourne of bedizenings. And Linden went with them, tumbling helplessly along the wind.

But as she rose, her awkward unfiery flesh began to soar. Below her, the hill lay like a pit of midnight at the bottom of the incandescent gyre. She left it behind, sailed up the bright spin of the sparks. Fires rang on all sides of her like transmuted bells. And still she was larked skyward by the whirlwind.

Then suddenly the night seemed to become true night, and the wind lifted her toward a heaven bedecked with stars. In the light of the fires, she saw herself and the Elohim spring like a waterspout from the travertine fountain and cycle upward. The maidan spread out below her in the dark, then faded as she went higher. Woodenwold closed around the lea: the mountains encircled Woodenwold. Still she rose in the gyre, rushing impossibly toward the stars.

She was not breathing, could not remember breath. She had been torn out of herself by awe-a piece of darkness flying in the company of dazzles. The horizons of the unlit Earth shrank as she arced forever toward the stars. An umbilicus of conflagration ascended from the absolute centre of the globe like the ongoing gyre of eternity.

And then there was nothing left of herself to which she could cling. She was an unenlightened mote among perfect jewels, and the jewels were stars, and the abysses around her and within her were fathomless and incomprehensible-a void cold as dying, empty as death. She did not exist amid the magnificence of the heavens. Their lonely and stunning beauty exalted and numbed her soul. She felt ecstasy and destruction as if they were the last thoughts she would ever have; and when she lost her balance, stumbled to fall face down on the earth of the eftmound, she was weeping with a grief that had no name.

But slowly the hard fact of the ground penetrated her, and her outcry turned to quiet tears of loss and relief and awe.

Covenant groaned nearby. She saw him through a smear of weakness. He was on his hands and knees, clenched rigid against the heavens. His eyes were haunted by a doom of stars.

“Bastards,” he panted. “Are you trying to break my heart?”

Linden tried to reach out to him. But she could not move. The bells were speaking in her mind. As the Elohim slowly returned to human form around the eftmound, restoring light to the sky, their silent language attained a moment of clarity.

One string of bells said:

— Does he truly conceive that such is our intent? Another answered:

— Is it not?

Then they relapsed into the metal and crystal and wood of their distinctive tones-implying everything, denoting nothing.

She shook her head, fought to recapture that tongue. But when she had blinked the confusion out of her eyes, she found Findail the Appointed standing in front of her.

Stiffly, he bent to her, helped her to her feet. His visage was a hatchment of rue and strain. “Sun-Sage.” His voice sounded dull with disuse. “It is our intent to serve the life of the Earth as best we may. That life is also ours.”

But she was still fumbling inwardly. His words seemed to have no content; and her thoughts frayed away from them, went in another direction. His bruised yellow eyes were the first orbs she had seen in Elemesnedene that appeared honest.

Her throat was sore with the grief of stars. She could not speak above a raw whisper. “Why do you want to hurt him?”

His gaze did not waver. But his hands were trembling. He said faintly, so that no one else could hear him, “We desire no hurt to him. We desire only to prevent the hurt which he will otherwise commit.” Then he turned away as if he could not endure the other things he wanted to say.

The four Giants were climbing to their feet near Linden. They wore stunned expressions, buffeted by vision. Seadreamer helped Covenant erect. The Elohim were gathering again about the slopes. She had understood the bells once more.

That such is our intent? She needed to talk to Covenant and the Giants, needed their reaction to what she had heard. Is it not? What harm did the Elohim think they could prevent by demeaning or wounding Covenant? And why were they divided about it? What made the difference between Daphin and Chant?

But Infelice stood waiting atop the eftmound. She wore her gleamings like a cocoon of chiaroscuro from which she might emerge at any moment to astonish the guests of the Elohimfest- a figure not to be denied. Firmly, she caught Linden's gaze and did not release it.

“Sun-Sage.” Infelice spoke like the light of her raiment. “The Elohimfest has begun. What has transpired is an utterance of our being. You will be wise to hold it in your heart and seek to comprehend it. But it is past, and before us stand the purposes which have brought you among us. Come.” She beckoned gracefully. “Let us speak of these matters.”

Linden obeyed as if Infelice's gesture had bereft her of volition. But she was immediately relieved to see that her companions did not mean to leave her alone. Covenant placed himself at her side. The Giants shifted forward behind her. Together, they passed among the Elohim and ascended the slope.

Near the crown of the eftmound, they stopped. Infelice's height, and the extra elevation of her position, placed her eyes on a level with Honninscrave's and Seadreamer's; but she kept her attention chiefly on Linden. Linden felt naked under that eldritch gaze; but she clung to her resolve and remained erect.

“Sun-Sage,” began Infelice, "the Giant Grimmand Honninscrave has surely shared with you his knowledge of Elemesnedene. Thus it is known to you that the bestowal of our gifts is not done freely. We possess much which is greatly perilous, not to be given without care. And knowledge or power which is not truly purchased swiftly tarnishes. If it does not turn against the hand that holds it, it loses all value whatsoever. And lastly we have little cause to relish intrusion from the outskirts of the Earth. Here we have no need of them. Therefore it is our wont to exact a price for that which is besought from us-and to refuse the seeking if the seeker can meet no price which pleases us.

“But you are the Sun-Sage,” she went on, “and the urgency of your quest is plain. Therefore from you and your companions I will require no feoffment. If your needs lie within our reach, we will meet them without price.”

Without — ? Linden stared up at Infelice. The belling intensified in her mind, tangling her thoughts. All the Elohim seemed to be concentrating toward her and Infelice.

“You may speak.” Infelice's tone conveyed only the barest suggestion of impatience.

Linden groaned to herself. Dear Christ. She turned to her companions, groping for inspiration. She should have known what to say, should have been prepared for this. But she had been braced for threats, not gifts. Infelice's offer and the bells confused everything.

The eagerness in Honninscrave's face stopped her. All his doubt had vanished. At once, she seized the opportunity. She needed a little time to take hold of herself. Without looking at Infelice, she said as flatly as she could, “I'm a stranger here. Let Honninscrave speak first.”

Like the passing of a great weight, she felt Infelice's gaze shift to the Master. “Speak, then, Grimmand Honninscrave,” the Elohim said in a timbre of graciousness.

At his side, the First stiffened as if she were unable to believe that he was truly in no danger. But she could not refuse him her nod of permission. Pitchwife watched the Master with anticipation. Seadreamer's eyes were shrouded, as if some inward vision muffled his perception of his brother.

Hope echoed like stars from under Honninscrave's massive brows as he stepped forward. “You honour me,” he said, and his voice was husky. “My desire is not for myself. It is for Cable Seadreamer my brother.”

At that, Seadreamer's attention leaped outward.

“Surely his plight is plain to you,” Honninscrave went on. “The Earth-Sight torments him, and that anguish has riven him of his voice. Yet it is the Earth-Sight which pilots our Search, to oppose a great evil in the Earth. The gift I ask is the gift of his voice, so that he may better guide us-and so that some easement may be accorded to his pain.”

Abruptly, he stopped, visibly restraining himself from supplication. His pulse laboured in the clenched muscles of his neck as he forced his Giantish passion to silence while Infelice looked toward Seadreamer.

Seadreamer replied with an expression of helpless and unexpected yearning. His oaken form was poignant with the acuteness of his desire for words, for some way to relieve the extravagant aggrievement of the Earth-Sight- or of the examination he had been given. He looked like a man who had glimpsed a saving light in the pall of his doom.

But Infelice took only a moment to consider him. Then she addressed Honninscrave again. She sounded faintly uninterested as she said, “Surely the voice of your brother may be restored. But you know not what you ask. His muteness arises from this Earth-Sight as day arises from the sun. To grant the gift you ask, we must perforce blind the eyes of his vision. That we will not do. We would not slay him at your request. Neither will we do him this wrong.”

Honninscrave's eyes flinched wide. Protests gathered in him, desire and dismay fighting for utterance. But Infelice said, “I have spoken,” with such finality that he staggered.

The brief light turned to ashes in Seadreamer's face. He caught at his brother's shoulder for support. But Honninscrave did not respond. He was a Giant: he seemed unable to comprehend how a hope he had been nurturing with such determination could be denied in so few words. He made no effort to conceal the grief which knuckled his features.

At the sight, Linden trembled in sudden anger. Apparently the graciousness of the Elohim masked an unpity like arrogance. She did not believe Infelice. These people were Earthpower incarnate. How could they be unable-?

No, They were not unable. They were unwilling.

Now she did not hesitate to face Infelice. Covenant tried to say something to her. She ignored him. Glaring upward, she spat out the gift she had meant to request.

If that's true, then you're probably going to tell me you can't do anything about Covenant's venom."

At her back, she felt her companions freeze in surprise and apprehension-taken aback by her unexpected demand, disturbed by her frank ire. But she ignored that as well, focused her shivering against Infelice's gaze.

“I don't ask you to do anything about his leprosy. That has too many implications. But the venom! It's killing him. It's making him dangerous to himself and everyone around him. It's probably the worst thing Foul has ever done to him. Are you going to tell me you can't do anything about that?”

The bells rang as if they were offended or concerned. One of them said:

— She transgresses incondignly upon our welcome. Another replied:

— With good reason. Our welcome has not been kindly. But a third said:

— Our path is too strait for kindness. He must not be permitted to destroy the Earth.

Linden did not listen to them. All her wrath was fixed on Infelice, waiting for the tall woman to meet or deny her implicit accusation.

“Sun-Sage.” Infelice's tone had hardened like a warning. “I see this venom of which you speak. It is plain in him-as is the wrong which you name leprosy. But we have no unction for this hurt. It is power-apt for good or ill-and too deeply entwined in his being for any disentanglement. Would you have us rip out the roots of his life? Power is life, and for him its roots are venom and leprosy. The price of such aid would be the loss of all power forever.”

Linden confronted Infelice. Rage set all her old abhorrence of futility afire. She could not endure to be rendered so useless. Behind her, Covenant was repeating her name, trying to distract her, warn or restrain her. But she had had enough of subterfuge and defalcation. The ready violence which lurked beneath the surface of Elemesnedene coursed through her.

“All right!” she flamed, daring Infelice to respond in kind, though she knew the Elohim had the might to snuff her like a candle. “Forget it. You can't do anything about the venom.” A sneer twisted her mouth. “You can't give Seadreamer back his voice. All right. If you say so. Here's something you goddamn well can do.”, “Chosen!” cautioned the First. But Linden did not stop.

“You can fight the Despiser for us.”

Her demand stunned the Giants into silence. Covenant swore softly as if he had never conceived of such a request. But her moiling passion would not let her halt.

Infelice had not moved. She, too, seemed taken aback.

“You sit here in your clachan,” Linden went on, choosing words like items of accusation, "letting time go by as if no evil or danger in all the world has any claim on your hieratic self-contemplation, when you could be doing something! You're Earthpower! You're all made out of Earthpower. You could stop the Sunbane-restore the Law-defeat Lord Foul-just by making the effort!

“Look at you!” she insisted. “You stand up there so you can be sure of looking down on us. And maybe you've got the right. Maybe Earthpower incarnate is so powerful we just naturally seem puny and pointless to you. But we're trying!” Honninscrave and Seadreamer had been hurt. Covenant had been denied. The whole quest was being betrayed. She flung out her sentences like jerrids, trying to strike some point of vulnerability or conscience in Infelice. “Foul is trying to destroy the Land. And if he succeeds, he won't stop there. He wants the whole Earth. Right now, his only enemies are puny, pointless mortals like us. In the name of simple shame if nothing else, you should be willing to stop him!”

As she ran out of words, lurched into silence, voices rose around the eftmound-expostulations of anger, concern, displeasure. Among them, Chant's shout stood out stridently. “Infelice, this is intolerable!”

“No!” Infelice shot back. Her denial stopped the protests of the Elohim, “She is the Sun-Sage, and I will tolerate her!”

This unexpected response cut the ground from under Linden. She wavered inwardly; surprise daunted her ire. The constant adumbration of the bells weakened her. She was barely able to hold Infelice's gaze as the tall Elohim spoke.

“Sun-Sage,” she said with a note like sorrow or regret in her voice, “this thing which you name Earthpower is our Wurd.” Like Daphin, she blurred the sound so that it could have been either Wyrd or Word, "You believe it to be a thing of suzerain might. In sooth, your belief is just. But have you come so far across the Earth without comprehending the helplessness of Power? We are what we are-and what we are not, we can never become. He whom you name the Despiser is a being of another kind entirely. We are effectless against him. That is our Wurd.

“And also,” she added as an afterthought, “Elemesnedene is our centre, as it is the centre of the Earth. Beyond its bounds we do not care to go.”

Linden wanted to cry out, You're lying! The protest was hot in her, burning to be shouted. But Covenant had come to her side. His half-hand gripped her shoulder like talons, digging inward as if to control her physically.

“She's telling the truth.” He spoke to her; but he was facing Infelice as if at last he had found the path of his purpose. Linden felt from him an anger to match her own-an anger that made him as rigid as bone, "Earthpower is not the answer to Despite. Or Kevin would never have been driven to the Ritual of Desecration. He was a master of Law and Earthpower, but it wasn't what he needed. He couldn't save the Land that way.

“That's why the Land needs us. Because of the wild magic. It conies from outside the Arch of Time. Like Foul. It can do things Earthpower can't.”

“Then it comes to this.” Honninscrave lifted his voice over Covenant's. The frank loss in his tone gave him a dignity to equal his stature; and he spoke as if he were passing judgment on the Elohim. "In all parts of the Earth are told the legends of Elemesnedene. The Elohim are bespoken as a people of sovereign faery puissance and wonder, the highest and most treasurable of all wonders. Among the Giants these tales are told gladly and often, and those who have been granted the fortune of a welcome here account themselves blessed.

“But we have not been given the welcome of which the world speaks with such yearning. Nor have we been granted the gifts which the world needs for its endurance. Rather, we have been reft of the Haruchai our companions and demeaned in ourselves. And we have been misled in our asking of gifts. You offer giving with feoffment, but it is no boon, for it places refusal beyond appeal. Elemesnedene is sadly altered, and I have no wish to carry this tale to the world.”

Linden listened to him urgently. Covenant's attitude appalled her. Did he think that Chant's desire for his ring was gratuitous? Was he deaf to the bells?

One of them was saying:

— He speaks truly. We are altered from what we were. A darker answer knelled:

— No. It is only that these mortals are more arrogant than any other.

But the first replied:

— No. It is we who are more arrogant. In time past, would we not have taken this cost upon ourselves? Yet now we require the price of him, that we will be spared it.

At once, a third chime interposed:

— You forget that he himself is the peril. We have chosen the only path which offers hope to him as well as to the Earth. The price may yet befall the Appointed.

But still the Elohimfest went on as if there were no bells. Stiffly, Infelice said, “Grimmand Honninscrave, you have spoken freely. Now be silent.” However, his dignity was beyond the reach of her reproof. Directing her gaze at Linden, she asked, “Are you content?”

“Content?” Linden began. “Are you out of-?”

Covenant's grip stopped her. His fingers gouged her shoulder, demanding restraint. Before she could fight free of him, shout his folly into his face, he said to Infelice, “No. All this is secondary. It's not why we're here.” He sounded like he had found another way to sacrifice himself.

“Continue, ring-wielder,” said Infelice evenly. The light in her hair and apparel seemed ready for anything he might say.

“It's true that Earthpower is not the answer to Despite.” He spoke as incisively as ice. “But the Sunbane is another matter. That's a question of Earthpower. If it isn't stopped, it's going to eat the heart out of the Earth.”

He paused. Calmly, Infelice waited for him.

And Linden also waiting. Her distrust of the Elohim converged with an innominate dread. She was intuitively afraid of Covenant's intent.

“I want to make a new Staff of Law.” His voice was fraught with risks. “A way to fight back. That's why we're here. We need to find the One Tree.” Slowly, he unclenched Linden's shoulder, released her and stepped aside as if to detach his peril from her. “I want you to tell us where it is.”

At once, the bells rang insistently. One of them struck out:

— Infelice, do not. Our hope will be lost. The crystal answer came clearly from her:

— It is understood and agreed. I will not. But her eyes gave no hint of her other conversations. They met Covenant squarely, almost with relish. “Ring-wielder,” she said carefully, “you have no need of that knowledge. It has already been placed in your mind.”

With matching care, matching readiness, he replied, “That's true. Caer-Caveral gave it to me. He said, The knowledge is within you, though you cannot see it. But when the time has come, you will find the means to unlock my gift.' But I don't know how to get at it.”

The chiming grew hushed, like bated breath. But Linden had caught the import of the bells. This was the moment for which they had been waiting.

In a rush of comprehension, she tried to fling herself at Covenant. Words too swift for utterance cried through her: They already know where the Tree is, this is what they want, don't you understand, Foul got here ahead of us! But her movements were too slow, clogged by mortality. Her heart seemed frozen between beats; no breath expanded her lungs. She had barely turned toward him when he spoke as if he knew he was committing himself to disaster.

“I want you to unlock the knowledge for me. I want you to open my mind.”

At the top of the eftmound, Infelice smiled.

Nine: The Gift of the Forestal

THE next moment, Linden reached Covenant so hard that he staggered several steps down the slope. Catching hold of his shirt, she jerked at him with all her strength. “Don't do it!”

He fought to regain his balance. His eyes burned like precursors of wild magic. “What's the matter with you?” he barked. “We have to know where it is.”

“Not that way!” She did not have enough strength, could not find enough force for her voice or her muscles. She wanted to coerce him physically; but even her passion was not enough. “You don't have to do that! They can just tell you! They already know where it is.”

Roughly, he took hold of her wrists, wrenched himself out of her grip. The rising of venom and power in him made his grasp irrefusable. He held her wrists together near the cut in his shirt, and she could not break free. “I believe you.” His glare was extreme. “These people probably know everything. But they aren't going to tell us. What do you want me to do? Beg until they change their minds?”

“Covenant.” She raged and pleaded simultaneously. “I can hear what they're saying to each other.” The words tumbled out of her. “They've got some secret purpose. Foul got here ahead of us. Don't let them possess you!”

That pierced him. He did not release her wrists; but his grip loosened as he jerked up his head to look at Infelice.

“Is this true?”

Infelice did not appear to be offended. Repeatedly, she tolerated Linden. “The Sun-Sage suggests that the Despiser has come upon us and bent us to his own ends. That is untrue. But that we have also our own purpose in this matter-that is true.”

“Then,” he gritted, “tell me where the One Tree is.”

“It is not our custom to grant unnecessary gifts.” Her tone refused all contradiction, all suasion. "For reasons which appear good to us, we have made our choice. We are the Elohim, and our choices He beyond your judgment. You have asked me to unlock the knowledge occulted within you. That gift I am willing to give-that and no other. You may accept or decline, according to the dictates of your doubt.

“If you desire another answer, seek it elsewhere. Inquire of the Sun-Sage why she does not enter your mind to gain this knowledge. The way is open to her.”

Linden recoiled. Enter-? Memories of Covenant's last relapse flared through her. Suppressed dark hunger leaped up in her. Surely to have him from what the Elohim intended-! But she had nearly cost him his life. Peril came crowding around her. It flushed like shame across her skin. The contradiction threatened to trap her. This was why she had been chosen, why Gibbon had touched her. Twisting out of Covenant's slackened grasp, she confronted Infelice and spat out the only answer she had-the only reply which enabled her to hold back the hunger.

“Possession is evil”

Was it true after all that the Elohim were evil?

Infelice cocked an eyebrow in disdain, but did not reply.

“Linden.” Covenant's voice was gripped like a bit between his teeth. His hands reached out to her, turned her to face him again. “I don't care whether we can trust them or not. We have got to know where the One Tree is. If they have something else in mind-” He grimaced acidly. “They think I don't count. How much of that do you think I can stand? After what I've been through?” His tone said clearly that he could not stand it at all. “I saved the Land once, and I'll do it again. They are not going to take that away from me.”

As she recognized his emotions, she went numb inside. Too much of his anger was directed at her-at the idea that she was the Sun-Sage, that he was to be blamed for affirming himself. The bells were within her range now, but she hardly listened to them. It was happening again, everything was happening again, there was nothing she could do, it would always happen. She was as useless to him as she had been to either of her parents. And she was going to lose him. She could not even say to him, I don't have the power. Don't you understand that the reason I won't go into you is to protect you? Instead, she let the frozen place in her heart speak.

“You're just doing this because you feel insulted. It's like your leprosy. You think you can get even by sacrificing yourself. The universal victim.” You never loved me anyway. “It's the only way you know how to live.”

She saw that she had hurt him-and that the pain made no difference. The more she reviled him, the more adamant he became. The hot mute glare with which he answered her rendered him untouchable. In his own terms, he had no choice. How could he rise above his plight, except by meeting it squarely and risking himself against it? When he turned his back on her to accept Infelice's offer, she did not try to stop him. Her numbness might as well have been grief.

“Covenant Giantfriend,” the First demanded. “Be wary of what you do. I have given the Search into your hands. It must not be lost.”

He ignored her. Facing Infelice, he muttered in a brittle voice, “I'm ready. Let's get on with it.”

A bell rang across the eftmound-a clamour of appeal or protest. Now Linden was able to identify its source. It came from Findail.

— Infelice, consider! It is my life you hazard. If this path fails, I must bear the cost. Is there no other way?

And once again Infelice surprised Linden. “Sun-Sage,” the Elohim said as if she were denying herself, “what is your word? In your name, I will refuse him if you wish it.” Covenant hissed like a curse; but Infelice was not done discounting him. She went on inflexibly, “However, the onus will be upon your head. You must make promise that you will take his ring from him ere he brings the Earth to ruin-that you will make ring-wielder and Sun-Sage one in yourself.” Covenant radiated a desperate outrage which Infelice did not deign to notice. “If you will not bind yourself to that promise, I must meet his request.”

Stiffly, Findail chimed:

— Infelice, I thank you.

But Linden had no way of knowing what Findail meant. She was reeling inwardly at the import of Infelice's proposal. This was a more insidious temptation than possession: it offered her power without exposing her to the threat of darkness. To accept responsibility for him? No, more than that: to accept responsibility for the whole quest, for the survival of the Earth and the defeat of Lord Foul. Here was her chance to protect Covenant from himself-to spare him in the same way he had so often striven to spare her.

But then she saw the hidden snare. If she accepted, the quest would have no way to find the One Tree. Unless she did what she had just refused to do-unless she violated him to pry out Caer-Caveral's secret knowledge. Everything came back to that. The strength of her buried yearning for that kind of power made her feel sick. But she had already rejected it, had spent her life rejecting it.

She shook her head. Dully, she said, “I can't tell him what to do”-and tried to believe that she was affirming something, asserting herself and him against temptation. But every word she spoke sounded like another denial. The thought of his peril wrung her heart. “Let him make his own decisions.”

Then she had to wrap her arms around her chest to protect herself against the force of Covenant's relief, Findail's clanging dismay, the apprehension of her friends-and against Infelice's eager radiance.

Come,“ the diamond-clad Elohim said at once, ”Let us begin."

And her inner voice added:

— Let him be taken by the silence, as we have purposed.

Involuntarily, Linden turned, saw Covenant and Infelice focused on each other as if they were transfixed. She wore her gleaming like the outward sign of a cunning victory. And he stood with his shoulders squared and his head raised, braced on the crux of his circinate doom. If he had paused to smile, Linden would have screamed.

With a slow flourish of her raiment like a billowing of jewels, Infelice descended from the hillcrest. Her power became her as if she had been born for it. Flowing like the grateful breeze of evening, she moved to stand before Covenant.

When she placed her hand on his forehead, the silent air of the eftmound was shredded with anguish.

A shriek as shrill as fangs clawed through his chest. He plunged to his knees. Every muscle in his face and neck knotted. His hands leaped at his temples as if his skull were being torn apart. Convulsions made him pummel the sides of his head helplessly.

Almost as one. Linden and the Giants surged toward him.

Before they could reach him, his outcry became a scream of wild magic. White flame blasted in all directions. Infelice recoiled. The rock of the eftmound reeled. Linden and Pitchwife fell. Scores of the Elohim took other shapes to protect themselves. The First snatched out her glaive as if her balance depended on it. She was shouting furiously at Infelice; but amid the roar of Covenant's power her voice made no sound.

Struggling to her hands and knees, Linden saw a sight that seemed to freeze the blood in her veins.

This conflagration was like no other she had ever witnessed. It did not come from his ring, from his half-fist pounding at his temple. It sprang straight from his forehead as if his brain had erupted in argence.

At first, the blaze spewed and flailed on every hand, scourging mad pain across the hill. But then the air became a tumult of bells, ringing in invocation, shaping the purpose of the Elohim; and the fire began to change. Slowly, it altered to a hot shining, as hard and white as all agony fused together.

Instinctively, Linden shielded her eyes. Such brilliance should have blinded her. But it did not. Though it beat against her face as if she were staring into the furnace of the sun, it remained bearable.

And within its clear core, visions were born.

One after another, they emerged through the radiance.

A young girl, a child in a blue dress, perhaps four or five years old, stood with her back pressed against the black trunk of a tree. Though she made no sound, she was wailing in unmasked terror at a timber-rattler near her bare legs.

Then the snake was gone, leaving two fatal red marks on the pale flesh of the child's shin.

Covenant staggered into the vision. He looked battered and abused from head to foot. Blood ran from an untended cut on his lips, from his forehead. He took the girl into his arms, tried to comfort her. They spoke to each other, but the vision was mute. Fumbling, he produced a penknife, opened it. With the lace of one of his boots, he made a tourniquet. Then he steadied the girl in his embrace, poised his knife over her violated shin.

With the movement of the knife, the vision changed. First one, then the other, blades slashed his wrists, drawing lines of death. Blood ran. He knelt in a pool of passion while Riders swung their rukhs and drove him helpless and vermeil into the soothtell.

A chaos of images followed. Linden saw the Land sprawling broken under the Sunbane. From the deluge of the sun of rain, the stricken ground merged into a desert; then the desert was leeched into the red suppuration of the sun of pestilence. At the same time, all these things were happening to Joan's flesh as she lay possessed and bound on her bed in Covenant's house. She was wracked through every form of disease until Linden nearly went mad at the sight.

The vision quivered with rage and revulsion, and wild magic appeared. Acute incandescence flamed like one white torch among the blood-lit rukhs. It bent itself to his slashed wrists, staunching the flow, sealing the wounds. Then he rose to his feet, borne erect by fury and conflagration, and his power went reaving among the Riders, slaying them like sheaves.

But as the white flame mounted toward concussion, the essence of its light changed, softened. Covenant stood on the surface of a lake, and its waters burned in a gyre before him, fining the krill into his hands. The lake upheld him like a benison, changing his savagery to the light of hope; for there was Earthpower yet within the Land, and this one lake if no other still sustained itself against the Sunbane.

Again the fire changed. Now it streamed away in rills of phosphorescence from the tall figure of a man. He was robed all in whitest sendaline. In his hand, he held a gnarled tree-limb as a staff. He bore himself with dignity and strength; but behind its grave devotion, his face had neither eyes nor eye-sockets.

As he addressed Covenant, other figures appeared. A blue-robed man with a crooked smile and serene eyes. A woman similarly clad, whose passionate features conveyed hints of love and hate. A man like Cail and Brinn, as poised and capable as judgment. And a Giant, who must have been Saltheart Foamfollower.

Covenant's Dead.

With them stood Vain, wearing his black perfection like a cloak to conceal his heart.

The figures spoke to Covenant through the mute vision. The blessing and curse of their affection bore him to his knees. Then the eyeless man, the Forestal, approached. Carefully, he stretched out his staff to touch Covenant's forehead.

Instantly, a blaze like a melody of flame sang out over the eftmound; and at once all Elemesnedene fell into darkness. Night arched within the vision-a night made explicit and familiar by stars. Slowly, the mapwork of the stars began to turn.

“See you, Honninscrave?” cried the First hoarsely.

“Yes!” he responded. “This path I can follow to the ends of the Earth.”

For a time, the stars articulated the way to the One Tree. Then, in the place they had defined, the vision dropped toward the sea. Amid the waves, an isle appeared. It was small and barren, standing like a cairn against the battery of the Sea, marking nothing. No sign of any life relieved the desolation of its rocky sides. Yet the intent of the vision was clear: this was the location of the One Tree.

Over the ocean rose a lorn wail. Covenant cried out as if he had caught a glimpse of his doom.

The sound tore through Linden. She struggled to her feet, tried to thrust her scant strength forward. Covenant knelt with the power blazing from his forehead as if he were being crucified by nails of brain-fire.

For a moment, she could not advance against the light: it held her back like a palpable current pouring from him. But then the bells rang out in unison:

— It is accomplished!

Some of them were savage with victory. Others expressed a deep rue.

At the same time, the vision began to fade from its consummation on the sea-bitten isle. The brilliance macerated by degrees, restoring the natural illumination of Elemesnedene, allowing Linden to advance. Step after step, she strove her way to Covenant. Vestiges of vision seemed to burn across her skin, crackle like lightning in her hair; but she fought through them. As the power frayed away to its end, leaving the atmosphere as stunned and still as a wasteland, she dropped to the ground in front of the Unbeliever.

He knelt in a slack posture, resting back on his heels with his arms unconsciously braced on his knees. He seemed unaware of anything. His gaze stared through her like a blind man's. His mouth hung open as if he had been bereft of every word or wail. His breathing shook slightly, painfully. The muscles of his chest ached in Linden's sight as if they had been torn on the rack of Infelice's opening.

But when she reached out her hand to him, he croaked like a parched and damaged raven, “Don't touch me.”

The words were clear. They echoed the old warning of his leprosy for all the Elohim to hear. But in his eyes the light of his mind had gone out.